Animal Adventure will create a landscape which invites children to explore and discover animals, allowing close-up, personal encounters through the blurring of boundaries between play zones and animal enclosures.Play zones emulate the habitats of the animals in the children’s zoo, and children will be encouraged to play on elevated walkways, treetop nests (the coatis habitat), or to wriggle through tunnels in order to observe the prairie dogs close up.Through the concept of “I am an animal” children will learn to appreciate that they too are animals, with problems to face, and the need to develop the skills with which to face them. Ultimately they will appreciate that no animal or person lives in isolation, but each individual has to negotiate their way through life and relationships with others.This has been an extraordinary project that combines an attempt to reach new zoological standards of habitat creation and husbandry for animals, with involving, interactive play for children. The brief, and the passion of the zoologists with whom we worked, has enabled us to explore new areas of design, detailing and construction.Whoever said “never work with children or animals” was wrong. We think it’s a winning combination.ZSL have developed LUC's concept design and completed Animal Adventure on site. It opened in April 2009.
