Socio-biology Of The Landscape

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

Perception loop

In the list of objects that every metropolis should have, there is also a zoo. This has been the practice since about the end of the 17th century, when in Europe the court menageries were replaced by the fashion for public places - botanical and zoological gardens, where enlightened citizens with great pleasure got acquainted with the flora and fauna of distant countries and continents. But if the format of the presentation of plants more or less quickly formed and remained almost unchanged, then the display of animals has changed over 300 years and, in fact, has become a kind of mirror of changes in man's attitude to nature in general and to representatives of the animal world in particular.

Approaches to keeping animals changed over the course of several centuries: at first, spacious enclosures came to the place of cramped cages, then the system of Hagenberg's "islands" and the search for the most humane, comfortable for animals and safe for people way of their coexistence in a closed territory is still underway. Throughout the 20th century, many famous architects such as Berthold Lubetkin and Ove Arup (penguinny in London), Norman Foster (elephant in Copenhagen), BIG (panda pavilion in Copenhagen), 3XN (aquarium in Copenhagen), fay architekten and liquid architekten (monkey house in Frankfurt am Main), Hascher Jehle (monkey house in Stuttgart) and so on tried their hand at creating pavilions.

But even taking into account the accumulated experience and a radical change in the attitude of mankind to the protection of animals, it would be rash to believe that the optimal format for keeping animals in captivity has been found. It is not surprising that many, under the influence of ideas about animals that are tormented in steel cages, fundamentally refuse to go to zoos.

Sad fairy tale

The Moscow Zoo was opened in 1864 and is one of the oldest zoos in Europe; at one time he was considered one of the most progressive. But already in the middle of the last century, it became clear that the territory of 21 hectares in the city center does not provide the required degree of comfort for animals. In the 1980s, land was allocated for a new zoo in the northern part of Bitsevsky Park. But good plans to move the zoo to a more favorable place met with opposition from the residents of the Southern Administrative District, whose opinion in the perestroika times that had come outweighed the arguments of specialists. Since then, the zoo has undergone a general reconstruction in the 1990s, when, with the light hand of Yuri Luzhkov, bizarre pavilions a la Disneyland and numerous sculptures by Zurab Tsereteli appeared here, the largest of which, called "The Tree of Tales", can serve as an excellent illustration of a difficult life and everyday life of the Moscow zoo, the inhabitants of which are locked in the center of one of the largest megacities in the world.

Since then, there have been no cardinal changes in the structure and functioning of the zoo - until 2015, when a decision was made on the need for a comprehensive reconstruction of the so-called "children's zone" - a narrow, L-shaped part of the new territory of the zoo, which overlooks the Garden Ring and actually serves as a corridor for the passage of visitors from this side.

Детская зона московского зоопарка © WOWHAUS

Burden of discovery

In 2015, the architects of the Wowhaus bureau were invited to develop a new concept for the children's zone of the Moscow zoo, who had recently begun working on another zoo project that was innovative for Moscow -

City farm at VDNKh. And for both sites, the architects were able to offer not only a modern form, but also a non-standard approach to ideology and program, fundamentally changing the stereotypical idea of how people and animals can coexist and interact in a city.

It was imperative for the bureau to refute persistent negative associations. Anna Ishchenko, CEO of Wowhaus, comments on the task set by the architects themselves: “If you talk to ordinary people on the streets, many, when they hear the word“zoo”, react sharply negatively: oh, the zoo, this is horror, this is a prison, how can you touch on this topic? Or: this is a petting zoo, where animals are squeezed until they turn blue, and then they die of depression. And when we tried to tell them that we have a completely different attitude to this, people did not believe us. But we understood that this could and should be a fundamentally different space with a completely different system of relations, with the concept of humane coexistence of man and animal, which in recent years has been increasingly spreading throughout the world. And we set ourselves the task of showing an example of a new approach to solving this problem here in Russia."

Interestingly, it is already becoming a good tradition for Wowhaus to break stereotypes, "rediscovering" old typologies such as parks, embankments or "summer cinemas" or creating new ones, such as city farms or museum squares. When asked how it turns out and why the bureau has become a pioneer over and over again, the bureau's partner Oleg Shapiro answers: “Each new architectural or urban planning task is a challenge, and we spend a lot of time looking for an answer. Therefore, we believe that it is better to spend time doing something new than just mediocrely pick up and repeat something. Therefore, we try every time to discover something for ourselves and for others - if possible."

Like a museum, only alive

The opening of a new typology was not easy. The fact is that in our country zoos belong to the department of culture and are considered a kind of museums, with the only difference from their brothers in respectable status is that their exhibits are still alive, with all the ensuing consequences. So the reassembly of the Moscow zoo's children's area was carried out taking into account a long list of mandatory requirements for the comfort and safety of animals, visitors and employees.

But to this list, architects, zoo employees, biologists, ornithologists, zoologists and zoopsychologists, as well as experts from the KB23 research bureau, who joined the project team to analyze the context and develop a new functional and program strategy, added a significant block reflecting modern ideas about how a museum should look and operate, transforming before our eyes from a place for passive accumulation and receipt of information into a multifunctional space that provides an interactive educational process.

Проект реорганизации Малой территории Московского зоопарка. 2015-2016 © WOWHAUS

“The contemporary museum is not so much about storage as about communication and development. Therefore, when we came up with the children's zoo, we decided that we would make it an educational center dedicated to all aspects of the history of domestication, domestication and coexistence of animals and humans. Over the centuries, certain species of birds and animals have not only learned to live next to man, but have also become dependent on him and, in fact, cannot survive without man. They formed a symbiotic, mutually beneficial alliance with man. There are quite a few such animals. And modern city dwellers, especially children, have no idea how relationships with our "lesser brothers" are built. What do they love, how are they interesting and useful, how are they similar and how do they differ from us? We came up with a space in which everyone, not only children, but also adults, can fill the gaps in their education and get the experience of interacting with animals associated with humanity through a long history of coexistence, without causing them any harm in the process of communication."

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1/6 Children's area of the Moscow Zoo © WOWHAUS
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2/6 Children's area of the Moscow Zoo © WOWHAUS
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3/6 Project for reorganization of the Small Territory of the Moscow Zoo. 2015-2016 © Wowhaus
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4/6 Project for reorganization of the Small Territory of the Moscow Zoo. 2015-2016 © Wowhaus
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5/6 Children's area of the Moscow Zoo © WOWHAUS
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6/6 Children's area of the Moscow Zoo © WOWHAUS

To build an interactive cognitive process, a team of architects, together with psychologists, sociologists and biologists, developed a methodology for presenting information about animals, which became the key to building the structure of the entire children's zoo.

According to the architects, “Education is built through the game of imitating animals. For example, rabbits hide in burrows and children can climb into the opposite tunnel of artificial vine, resembling a burrow. Alpacas and goats jump over rocks, and children can jump over rocks and wooden posts, and so on. It turns out a projection, the child looks after the animals and tries to repeat what they are doing. There is no need to read long explanations, you learn everything from your own experience. Of course, there are also signs, but they serve as an auxiliary source of information."

The path of knowledge

The territory of the children's zone of the Moscow zoo is similar in plan to the letter "G" and is a broken corridor connecting the new territory of the zoo and the exit to the Garden Ring. The maximum width of the passage does not even reach 65 meters, and the length is only 300 meters.

Along this narrow corridor, the architects have laid out two routes along which visitors can either take a fascinating journey into the world of domesticated animals, or, if they are already tired during the tour of the rest of the zoo and are not interested in a detailed study of the exposition, quickly walk to the exit. The main route, complicated, full of attractors and special infotainment stops, is intended for those children who come here one day and become a regular or come back a couple of times, but will forever retain in their memory wonderful memories of how they were able to get acquainted with the world of animals for the first time, observe for the hectic life of birds in the avia, or bump into sheep shamelessly demanding delicacies at the contact zoo site, or understand that rabbits are not only valuable fur, but also bright individuals and excellent athletes.

All these experiences and adventures are thoroughly thought out and distributed along a winding route, giving visitors the opportunity to alternate acquaintance with scientific information with play at various venues, as well as contact with animals and many other intellectual and physical activities. On a few hundred meters of the route, the architects were able to place 10 main thematic blocks: a store, an educational center with a cafe, a "city of rabbits", an aviary, a poultry zone, a contact zone "Forest", a dovecote, a contact zone with a "goat mountain", a "farm" and a technical area.

Nests, tunnels and mountains

For each block, their own image was invented, playing on a single design theme for the entire children's zoo - a paraphrase on natural elements, but without imitation and flirting with literary associations that made such a painful impression in this part before the reconstruction. The appearance of each block is easily recognizable as a prototype that has gone through a high-quality architectural arrangement that combines the external plastic and the constructive skeleton into a single volumetric-spatial composition.

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1/4 Children's area of the Moscow Zoo © WOWHAUS
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2/4 Children's area of the Moscow Zoo © WOWHAUS
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3/4 Children's area of the Moscow Zoo © WOWHAUS
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4/4 Children's area of the Moscow Zoo © WOWHAUS

Immediately after entering the territory of the children's zone, guests are greeted by two of the most noticeable ones due to the rather impressive size and complexity of the block arrangement: a store and an educational center. Here will be held classes of circles and lectures, here is the meeting place for the participants of excursions. The facades of the oval-shaped buildings are formed by intersecting inclined yellow posts, which the architects themselves compare to bird nests. Each of the blocks is surrounded by an intricate system of stairs, ramps, terraces and walkways, along with several playgrounds located at different levels, forming their own adventure ecosystem.

Between the store and the center there is a large sand playground with different games, including a unique construction set developed in collaboration with biologist Dmitry Knorre, who invented the board game Evolution and adapted it for the Moscow Zoo so that children can try their hand at inventing new species of animals. combining body parts of real animals in unusual combinations.

Nearby, an S-shaped airplane tunnel begins, which also vaguely resembles a nest thanks to a shell of wooden planks that press the mesh to the base of metal structures. The airplane was designed to give the birds living inside the opportunity to vary the degree of interaction with the visitors themselves. Birds can walk on the ground, sit on branches above paths, or fly away into thicker thickets in the bends of the tunnel, where visitors cannot approach.

In a similar way - with a division into private and public areas, aviaries for poultry and ungulates are organized. Even the inhabitants of the contact area can always choose which part of the pen to be in. But in this part of the park, apparently, the most sociable and voracious animals are selected, so that the visitor sometimes himself may want to hide somewhere from their annoying interest in the contents of his pockets. All that remains is to retreat and take time-out at the enclosures with melancholic alpacas, with the same calmness receiving delicacies and posing for photographs.

Like a lighthouse marking the place of the "fracture" of the territory of the children's zoo, the tower of the "King of the Hill" rises, which all visitors take for another children's attraction, but in fact, this complex jumble of structures and playgrounds is intended exclusively for the entertainment of the local goat community, which and in its natural habitat loves to climb and jump from ledge to ledge. And so that the goats would not be bored of climbing the same route, the structure of the "Mountain" is designed in such a way that it could be changed, complementing it with new obstacles. And of course, the time and energy of horny users will add new "problem areas" to the design.

Behind the contact area is the only traditional architectural element - a "farm" that looks like it was transported here by some very caring tornado from somewhere in the Austrian Alps. The pitched roofs, covered with sheared thatch, look extremely traditional, in opposition to the modernist "nests" of yellow posts. But there is a "rest house" for the inhabitants of the zoo and auxiliary rooms for the staff, so calm tradition is a tribute to the function and a way to avoid unnecessary attention of visitors.

The yellow color of knowledge

A cross-cutting theme in the design of infrastructure facilities and navigation is yellow, which we have already noted in the design of the store and the educational center. “Yellow is found throughout the territory. We used it to mark all information and game elements so that they are more visible and easily recognized by visitors among the many objects that differ in their purpose. As echoes of our main information center, small information modules are distributed throughout the territory. For very young visitors, they are not interesting, but for older children who want to learn more about the inhabitants of the zoo and how they live in nature, they will come in handy. Moreover, we have developed different ways of obtaining information, focusing on game formats, - Anastasia Izmakova, the lead architect of the project, who was in charge of architectural supervision, comments on the role of this color in the overall design.

Abnormal situation

A huge number of various architectural, design, educational and entertaining discoveries and inventions are concentrated on the very compact territory of the zoo's children's zone. The density of original ideas and solutions per square meter is simply prohibitive. And as is often the case in our conditions, the number of non-standard elements resulted in an exponential progression of difficulties at the stage of their coordination and implementation.

The main loss of the project was the forced abandonment of the use of load-bearing wooden structures. Ensuring fire safety, taking into account the large estimated number of visitors and the proximity of neighboring residential and office buildings, required the replacement of all wood-glued structures with metal ones. In addition, the authors had to abandon the use of natural wood braided "nests" in playgrounds and in the decoration of pavilions. The experience of operating natural branches in the parks Krasnogvardeiskiye Prudy and Hammer and Sickle showed that natural material breaks down too quickly, not withstanding the enthusiasm of young gamblers, and does not fully meet safety requirements. The tree was preserved in the decoration of small architectural forms, in fences, and, in part, in the decoration of the facades of the pavilions.

The children's zoo project became an unconditional success and another discovery for the Wowhaus bureau, but, at the same time, one of the most difficult projects in its entire history, turning into a four-year battle for the preservation and implementation of all those ideas that the architects found together with invited experts and employees. zoo - to once and for all change our understanding of what a modern zoo can be.