At Copenhagen Zoo, Denmark's most popular cultural institution, the Elephant House was designed by Norman Foster's bureau: a spacious glass-roofed dwelling surrounded by an area of ponds and hills.
Based on the habits of the Indian elephants, for which the new complex is intended, the architects divided the residential building into two parts: for males and for females with calves. It is buried in the ground to enhance its thermal insulation. Visitor viewing platforms run around the domes on both sides of the building, whose glass panels are covered with fritted leaf silhouettes to simulate the lighting through the canopy for animals.
The walls of the elephant's dwelling are made of terracotta-colored concrete, the floor and the relief of the enclosures are formed by a layer of sand. In general, the complex should create a feeling of open space for the animals, as well as ¬– resemble their natural habitat: a dry river bed on the border of a tropical forest. Among the innovations of Foster's project is the possibility for the elephants to spend the night together for the whole herd (as happens in nature) in a common room, and not in separate cages.
Even more capricious customers were the German architects bureau fay architekten and liquid architekten, who designed the "monkey house" for the Frankfurt am Main zoo. They were to place various primate species there, from mandrills to gorillas. As a result, on a plot with mixed terrain of 10,000 sq. m, a construction of 2.7 thousand square meters was built. m, which includes not only aviaries for different types that smoothly merge into each other, but also a space for visitors. They are offered an "expedition" along the entire "Borgorivald", as the new home of the monkeys is named: along a narrow winding passage, now descending below ground level, now rising to the treetops, leading past a waterfall, a "tunnel of gorillas" and "gallery of orangutans." The glass-walled structure is covered by a vines leaf-shaped concrete roof with four domed glazing zones. Inside it and on the territory around it, the diversity of the landscape is most consistent with the living conditions of animals in nature: there are streams and ponds, rocks, ravines, hills, dense groves of trees and swamps.
