French architects Beckmann-N’Thépé and landscape designers TN+ have won a competition to remodel Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki, Finland.
The proposal involves creating a large glass-domed entrance and animal viewing building on the island zoo, and bringing back polar bears after a 30-year absence.
Here’s some info from the architects:
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BECKMANN-N’THEPE
sarl d’Architecture
KORKEASAARI ZOO
(Helsinki – Finlande)
Programme :
Redevelopment of helsinki Zoo / Landscape / greenhouses, auditorium, nocturama, reception office, souvenir shop, technical room, restaurant.
Architects:
Beckmann-N’Thépé Agency (Paris)
Aldric Beckmann, Françoise N’thépé
Landscape design:
TN Plus Agency (Paris)
Bruno Tanant, Jean Christophe Nani
Client:
City of Helsinki (Finlande)
Area:
26,2 ha
Cost:
NC
Delivery date:
Design team:
Project manager: Wilfried Daufy
Architects: Anne-Catherine Dufros
Assistant architects: Constance Héau, Jessica Pallatier
Landscape design: Guillaume Derrien, Agathe Turmel
Zoo expert: Jean Marc Lernould
TEXT:
The zoological island of Korkeasaari will be cut off again. Its architectural interventions will be concentrated to make it wild and mysterious once more – a park / garden as a place of popular privilege, the nobility of the future city.
Architecture disappears in favour of controlled geography, like the resurgence of a neighbouring landscape. The entrance grouping the set of utilities crucial to the running of the zoo becomes a focus of visual identity, somewhere between form and shapelessness, pierced with cavities.
Above: entrance lower level. Below: entrance upper level
Like layers of skin peeled back to receive an implant, there will be an above and a below that dialogue and interpenetrate one another. Areas of light, uncertainty, reflections and depths will be developed, offering the first emotions of a visit that will play on time and the seasons through four biozones :
- Central Asian Steppe
- Arctic Pole
- Asian Temperate Forest
- Central Asian Mountain
Above: polar bear enclosure
More zoo buildings on Dezeen:
.
Elephant House, Copenhagen Zoo, by Foster + Partners
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Posted by Marcus Fairs
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
‘Cool’ architecture, but God help the poor animals…
February 24th, 2009 at 12:28 am
something very erotic about this, maby its just me
February 24th, 2009 at 1:49 am
Exactly Aaron, exactly.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Wow
February 24th, 2009 at 6:55 am
My distinguished colleague, Mr. Esa Laaksonen, director of the Alvar Aalto Academy here in Finland had quite a critical opinion about the result of this competition in ARKKITEHTIUUTISET, in his column in Finnish. I have no idea whether or not the column has been translated into English. Worth reading, though… Arkkitehtiuutiset is published by SAFA (www.safa.fi) and you can ask more abiut the content of the column from the pr person Ms. Päivi Virtanen – in case you are interested.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
more student work yay!
February 24th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
excellent architecture
February 25th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Exactly *how * is this excellent architecture? Because it makes people go ‘wow’? Excellent architecture, among other things, responds to the requirements of the brief. One would hope one of the key requirements of the brief was to house the animals in a humane way. I would suggest that a primary way of doing this would have been to have as little ‘architecture’ as possible.
Many people wouldn’t choose to live in a building like this. I suspect even fewer animals would. The same goes for Lord Foster’s zoo design.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:09 am
it looks insane, shame im against zoo’s!
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:04 am
humans amd animal are species totally diferent…. they don’t gonna understand why this architecture are so poor, and they gonna feel bad because the biological enviroment are so facke. terrible design¡