makeshift

There has been renewed interest in the design of the zoo. But much of the interest has revolved around an approach which is structurally innovative, but strategically conservative. About a year ago a competition in that mindset - to design 'The Environmental Zoo' of the Future' - provided a perfect opportunity to explore the wider question: Do Zoos have a future? The alternative model imagined here is not the result of any personal opinions about animal welfare (although others with such views may welcome it), but simply a speculation upon economic and cultural logic. The Migratory Zoo is half-proposal, half-prediction:

The Zoo of the 21st century will not be concerned with the design of enclosures for animals but the design of enclosures for human beings.

The Zoo is a raw example of architecture as a distorter of time and distance. When it was invented, as a Parisian Menagerie, its premise was that because most could not go to see the world, the world should be brought to them. The power of an empire could be measured by the diversity of its zoo.

Architecture, previously concerned with the adaption of the environment for human beings, now had to apply itself to mediating this artificial distortion. Animals had to be permanently housed in stage sets, which for tropical species, could simulate heat and humidity - even introducing ‘native’ flora as well as fauna to enhance the illusion. For nocturnal species, time is completely inverted: creating dim night-like conditions during opening hours, and bright day-like conditions at night (which the public never sees). The key challenge is proximity - housing prey so close to predator, architecture’s only option was to disarm the food chain, replacing it with feeding patterns, walls and fences.

MICROCOSM

Constructed usually in densely populated but open areas such as city parks, the traditional zoo became a microcosm of the planet: an inhabitable world map. On a Sunday afternoon, it became possible to wander between continents in a matter of minutes - a form of power-augmentation made explicit in the zoning-plans of some zoos: the Africa Zone, the Australasia zone... Since the enclosures became icons for their inhabitants, zoo architecture became an agglomeration of theatres, a scale model of globalisation itself.

MIGRATION

With mankind’s increased ability to augment his capabilities through technology has come an increase in human migration on a massive scale. Beginning with the drive-thru safari park, we have created a condition in which we no longer place animals in protective cages, but humans. This inversion is important, and radical. Enclosing an animal in a cage ASSUMES humans’ intellectual superiority. Enclosing a human and an aqualung in a cage and lowering them into shark-infested waters RELIES upon humans’ intellectual superiority.

There is a healthy mutual respect between the brutality of the environment and man-only-with-the-help-of-technology.

THREAT

Globalisation has presented another fundamental challenge to the traditional zoo. Faced with the growing human population and its expanding patterns of consumption, the original habitats themselves have become endangered enclosures. Zoos, paradoxically, find themselves running as a funding and education mechanism for the real work of global wildlife conservation in original habitats under threat.

From the zoo as a model of the planet, the planet has now become a zoo.

AIRSHIP

What is proposed is a gradual decommisioning of the artificial distinction between public wildlife captivity and private wildlife conservation. The Migratory Zoo is an airship, a mode of transport chosen for its ability to transcend topography, hover for unlimited periods of time, move from continent to continent within hours or days, and above all, achieve intimacy with natural environments while inflicting almost zero footprint (physical, acoustic, environmental).

SAFARI

Following prevailing wind currents around the world in order to minimise fuel consumption, the Migratory Zoo is effectively a hotel on safari - refuelling and restocking at cities most in need of an economic boost. 

The decision to apply technology to the development and construction of mobile human-enclosures rather than static animal enclosures is an admission that architecture cannot compete with the spectacle of nature, and that the original habitats, rather than the man-made ones, are the ones that most need to benefit from the tourist economy.

CONSERVATION AS SPECTACLE

Despite its potential to be environmentally noninvasive, the objective will not be passive observation, but the airship will be a tool for the various conservation projects it visits (a useful platform for tracking down / treating large mammals, submerged sealife, birds), it will be an active agent establishing operational relationships between human and environment, including vetinary, scientific or political action.

The tourists, more than just consumers, are invited to participate in live projects. Thus the zoo is both leisure facility and educational institution (it is still relatively unusual to return from your holiday with an accredited qualification of your increased knowledge).

PLANET AS ZOO

This capacity to engage first-hand with local and global issues will not be restricted purely to wildlife, but all aspects of planetary husbandry- including water supply,equitable industry, deforestation...

The naively optimistic subtext of the Migratory Zoo is that the contrivances of tourism might become agents of global citizenship / responsibility rather than the opposite. At the same time it accepts the inevitability of the literal or metaphorical glass floor behind which the tourist is trapped.

THE MOBILE PRISONERS

Just as traditional zoo keepers must introduce stimulation for animals in enclosures, so the tourists will be confronted by the looming threat of boredom. To this end, the Migratory Zoo is stuffed with information and toys, including a Golf driving range. Each golf ball contains a wireless mote capable of broadcasting environmental data and activity. So should the tourist over-hit the ball into the landscape below, it will only serve to increase the amount of information available.