As part of the concept team at PGAV that developed Glacier Run with Louisville Zoo, I am excitedly awaiting the opening of Phase 3 of Glacier Run–the Polar Bear, Sea Lion, Sea Otter, and Stellar’s Sea Eagle exhibits. However, since phase 3 is still not under construction yet due to lack of funding (get on their webpage and donate people!), we’ll have to enjoy the opening of a refurbished Siberian Tiger exhibit nearby the site.
Phase 1 of the exhibit area, a themed water play area, was opened last summer, and has since been packed with visitors daily. Phase 2, the tiger renovations, included updating the mid-century enclosure to be more visitor and keeper friendly. The old exhibit was uninviting, having 15′ tall concrete walls all along the public walkway. The viewing area looked like a bunker. Now, the visitor area has been softened with pergolas and plantings. Training panels have been added so the public can get a first-hand view of the extensive behavioral training and enrichment the zoo conducts with its tigers.
In fact, Louisville Zoo is on the forefront of animal training and has a tradition of building enrichment and training opportunities into exhibits as a major component (see the Islands exhibit). The Zoo’s philosophy is to turn the zoo “inside out” so all visitors can clearly see the extraordinary care given to the animals by the staff.
In Phase 3, you’ll see much of the same. In concept development, the staff’s first concern was to make the environment as complex and enriching as possible with the small amount of space available to the exhibit. This created not only a complex exhibit, but also a complex holding and enrichment facility with tunnels, stairs, a foraging room, and a maze of transfer chutes. In the final design, most of these elements made it, enriching not only the animals’ lives but also the enhancing the experience for the visitors.
The new Glacier Run exhibit area will replace the current mid-century polar bear exhibit, and take over the adjacent hillside. The old exhibit was an excellent example of modernist design infiltrating zoos. The exhibit was more of a sculputural piece than a proper animal enclosure, and the animals were clearly affected. Stereotypy was seen, and animals rarely used their pool. The exhibit was entirely concrete with no natural substrates whatsoever. The new exhibit will be greatly appreciated by the bears.
Over ten years ago, Jon Coe wrote a paper outlining the upcoming breakthroughs in exhibit design, using enrichment based (or as he says, activity-based) design. These exhibits have now been opened and are successful. However, ten years from the original date of the paper, designers still have not fully embraced the design concept. Incorporating enrichment devices into an exhibit is one thing; to fully base design on enrichment or activity, is an entirely different animal.
As Coe points out, however, design is not fully the designers’ decision. A new animal habitat has many stakeholders, and even if the designer supports the idea of basing design on enrichment, the entire team of administrators, keepers, curators, and Board of Directors, not to mention all members of the design team, must also agree.
In many cases, the resources (of time, money, and/or space) just aren’t there. Many times, the decision comes down to making an immersive environment or making an enriching environment. Unfortunately, many folks in the industry still hold onto the idea that an immersive environment equals animal health and activity, or at least, equal visitor satisfaction. However, active animals are much more powerful than a pretty environment, and we must work on our clients to understand this.
John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan, opened a new $4 million lion exhibit, Lions of Lake Manyara, on June 14th. After several years without lions, the zoo has brought them back due to public demand for the beloved cats. Three lions, two female, one male, are now living in the large enclosure designed by Jones & Jones.
Taking lion behavior into consideration, the designers incorporated elements not normally seen in lion exhibits. Large areas of grass, natural trees and climbing rocks are seen throughout, plus a 30 foot tall artificial tree for climbing and lounging. The tree will be cooled and heated, as well as some of the rocks.
Historically, large cat exhibits have lacked interest and elements appealing to cats. Use of verticality for all types of cats is essential, and since most cats are daytime sleepers, providing unique perching and sleeping areas is key for both the cats and the visitors. With the opening of Philadelphia Zoo’s Big Cat Falls last year, hopefully, this trend for revamping cat exhibits will catch on nationwide.
Henry Doorly Zoo is currently purchasing an adjacent site to increase the size of the zoo by nearly 36 acres. Incidentally, many urban zoos are less than 30 acres in total size, so this addition is a major add.
Plans were announced for $100 million in new exhibits…
950 additional parking spaces
Madagascar Exhibit (a currently popular trend…see Bronx)
Arctic Exhibit (another popular trend…polar bears)
Adding Elephants (different as many zoos are deleting elephants from their collections)
Like Polar Bears, Elephants have been a hot topic for zoos in the recent past. Animal activists have started coming to the forefront, making alliances and friends of folks in power. In extreme cases, like the city of Chicago, pending legislation prohibits elephants to be kept in captivity, unless the institution meets unrealistic standards.
In the case of Chicago, the new city ordinance would require 10 acres per elephant, of which, 5 acres are indoor. These requirements are intended to drive zoos and circuses out of the elephant business. As misguided as this ordinance seems (although I do agree with opposition to circuses), strong public support makes this type of legislation feasible, not only in local municipalities, but could, some day, reach national levels.
To help avoid the critical eye of animal activists such as Save the Wild Elephants, whose aim is strategically placed on zoos across the country, North Carolina Zoo recently opened an expansion to their already massive mixed species African plains exhibit, now called “Watani Grassland Reserve.”
In addition to the added space, the exhibit incorporates art and graphics as a means of learning throughout. The exhibit added up close views of elephant pools, and the experience is intended to be passive and exploratory, with thousands of feet of meandering trails. Vistas across open grassy plains are the norm here, and visitors are easily immersed in the idea of being on safari.
I’m curious if this massive exhibit would meet the Chicago legislation, as this exhibit is surely the largest and most responsible habitat out there. Watch news video.
Stats:
44 acres
$8.5 million
7 African Elephant (ability to hold 2-3 bulls)
9 White Rhino
Antelope species
13,000 sf Indoor Elephant only Facility ($2.5 million)
Here‘s a review from the NY Times on the Bronx Zoo’s exhibit, which opened Thursday.
Update: I just learned through the Bronx Zoo website that the revamped Lion House will be applying for LEED Gold status.
“In 2006, the Lion House received the NYC Green Building Award from the city’s Department of Environmental Protection. Additionally, the Lion House carries the distinction of being the first landmark building in New York City anticipated to receive the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold rating. Some of the green technology includes extensive use of dynamic skylights to maximize daylight and modulate the temperature in the exhibit, geothermal heating and cooling systems to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and technologies that result in a 57 percent savings in energy and a 59 percent savings in water consumption.”
The greening of zoos is another topic to be explored very soon…keep watching…
In the past few years, a trend of opening zoos later or keeping them open longer has been spreading across the globe, especially during summertime. Recently, I saw that San Diego Wild Animal Park is offering night safaris until 9pm, which got me to wondering why all zoos dont capitalize on this.
For one thing, allowing visitors to come at night opens your market up to young professionals who are busy working during weekdays, and uninterested in fighting the family crowd (and heat) during the weekends. The teenage market would also, more than likely, love extended hours as teenagers are constantly looking for places to hang out, and the zoo would be a “safe” and acceptable place from their parents point of view.
Increasing your market equals increased spending and increased chance to meet educational goals.
Secondly, nighttime visitation allows people to avoid the peak heat of summer days, and will theoretically increase their stay time. Additionally, many animals displayed in zoos are crepuscular (active during dawn and dusk) or nocturnal, and therefore, will be the most active during evening hours. Animal activity always equates increased stay times.
An increased stay time equals increased spending and increased chance to meet educational goals.
Opponents site the extended hours actually hurt the zoo due to increased cost of staffing for extra hours. However, some zoos in especially hot climates have actually changed their summer hours to shift toward the evening. For example, the Al Ain Zoo in Abu Dhabi, UAE changes their summer hours to open in the afternoon and stay open past midnight, when in winter, have more traditional morning through afternoon hours.
Another zoo in Singapore, the Singapore Night Safari Park, was actually developed to only be open in the evenings. Their novel approach has brought loads of attention from the industry and visitors worldwide, and from what I can tell, are tremendously successful.
What’s your experience with nighttime summer hours?
I’ve written in the previous posts about my experience studying visitor behavior at zoos. Well, I’ve briefly mentioned it, at least. Although many zoos throughout the U.S. are studying visitor behavior, it is a rare occasion for designers to get the chance to get the first-hand experience of studying how visitors use their designs.
I highly recommend doing some informal visitor studies at exhibits you’ve designed as well as at those you have not. From my past visitor studies, I’ve learned two consistent lessons:
1. Visitors stay at each viewing station less than 90 seconds. No matter what species is displayed, or how well they are displayed. The only exception is when the animal is extremely active. For example, studying visitors at Disney’s Animal Kingdom’s beautiful tiger exhibit, I noticed a major spike in visitor length of stay, from the average 90 seconds to upwards of 9 minutes when the tigers had, serendipitously, spotted a rabbit in their enclosure and subsequently went into hunting mode. The experience was mesmerizing, and everyone was swept up into the excitement. This makes me wonder if live feedings shouldn’t be more acceptable…but that’s another story.
2. Less than 2% of visitors fully read signage. Fully interactive interpretives may be a different story. None of the exhibits I have studied had any of these more modern interpretives.
Researchers at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo studied visitor behavior following the opening of their recently opened Regenstein Center for African Apes. The article written outlining their experience supports only one of my lessons…No one reads signs. However, their visitor stay time far exceeded anything I’ve encountered (although they measured their length of stay differently, by measuring the full exhibit stay time rather than per viewing window).
That researcher in the ape house? She was studying you.
By James Janega
Tribune staff reporter
April 26, 2007, 10:57 PM CDT
The animal behaviorists at Lincoln Park Zoo have given simple tools to gorillas and taught chimpanzees to navigate computer touch screens, but their latest experiment involved a primate so intelligent and cagey, it was going to take work to outsmart it.
The subject was people and to measure their behavior at the zoo’s ape sanctuary without them catching on, a 24-year-old zoo office worker with girl-next-door looks would have to slip on quieter shoes, wear muted colors and follow people in secret by watching their reflections on glass.
Starting last spring, conservation assistant Katie Gillespie spent a year clocking visitors’ stays in the Regenstein Center for African Apes, noting where people loiter and what they look at.
With her boss, Steve Ross, she frowned when people ignored interpretive signs and took smug comfort when subjects were captivated by apes. For months, she and Ross hoarded statistical glimpses into how humans prefer to learn about chimpanzees and gorillas.
It was all very scientific, not to mention fun and kind of sneaky.
In the course of 476 observation sessions over 12 months, Gillespie and Ross learned that everybody likes watching apes and nobody likes reading signs. They found people love to pose with ape sculptures, and that parents all too often make up answers for their children.
And they proved the best way to fool people is to let them fool themselves.
“I’ve had people ask me what I’m doing,” Gillespie said. “I tell them I’m taking behavioral data. Then they ask me questions about the animals.”
Gillespie, who has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, trained in natural resource management and has a day job as exotic as her office cubicle.
As for zoo experience, she made signs for a raptor walk at the Marshfield Zoo near Wausau. Her real job at Lincoln Park Zoo involves administrative tasks at an office a few minutes away from the ape building.
But on Feb. 21 last year, she climbed into an unlit, concrete mezzanine at the Regenstein Center, looked out windows tailored for watching animals, and listened as Ross told how to follow people without them knowing.
It was a slow morning in the ape center, a tough time to avoid notice. But there are tricks of the trade, Ross reassured her.
Downstairs, other conservation assistants were using Palm Pilots to study apes. Hold one, and people will assume you’re watching chimps, he said. Get ahead of people and let them pass you. Use reflections and peripheral vision.
He used the word “spy.” Gillespie got the job after biologists told Ross they’d rather watch apes, not people.
Ross had done this before, in 2000, but inside the old, round, dark Great Ape House, a cinch compared with the Regenstein Center’s bright, open floor plan. This new place, built in 2004, upped the ante. You could get caught.
“I’ve had an awful time getting people to do this,” Ross told her.
Gillespie stuffed printed explanations of the study in her pocket that included Ross’ phone number, to hand out in case she was confronted. In those first days, she wondered if it was going to work.
“It’s almost impossible,” she exclaimed early on. As a practice subject approached the entrance, she hurried down the metal stairs to the floor below, her high-heeled pumps clanging on each step. The ringing subsided just as the subject opened the door below the mezzanine.
“We gotta get you some sneakers,” Ross told her later.
By May and June, when school groups crowded the floor so thoroughly it was hard to move, Gillespie was an expert. She followed kids in camp groups in July, vacationers in August and September, and aborted an observation only once-when a young couple started making out.
It turned out the challenge wasn’t getting caught, she found. It was battling exasperation. People complained when the apes sat around, in the middle of rest cycles clearly defined on nearby signs. Parents made up answers to kids’ questions. People made mistakes, and no one corrected them.
“You hear people asking questions that are written all over every sign everywhere,” Gillespie said of those moments. “But you can’t influence them.”
So she just observed-always the fifth person to enter after the last subject left. The sessions were always anonymous. Regulars were ignored.
Her shortest follow came on a sunny Sunday afternoon in June: a girl in an organized group who stayed 2.3 minutes while a heavy crowd shoved through the air-conditioned building. The longest visit was in December, a woman with children who relaxed for 116 minutes. January brought visitors in a steady, unhurried rhythm. Often, the subjects stood at Gillespie’s elbow without knowing.
One was the man in the blue coat. At midday on Jan. 24, 2007, Gillespie, wearing moccasins, padded down the stairs from her mezzanine perch to beat him to the chimp enclosure.
Behind her, the man watched JoJo’s gorilla troop, then breezed past an interpretive display to study Hank and his group of chimps, where he planted himself in front of Gillespie to do it.
She wore a zoo badge and appeared to watch the animals. Every 15 seconds, her Palm Pilot chirped a reminder to note the man’s behavior: “Locomote,” “Watch Chimps,” “Photo Chimp.”
The terminology was borrowed from animal behaviorists, and the man in the blue coat had no idea the soft beeping was for him.
Over 29 minutes, Gillespie took two pages of behavioral notes. The man watched both gorilla troops, talked to docents, took more pictures and left. The list recorded only movement, location and activity.
But on the floor it looked like more. It seemed like deep fascination.
A full analysis is months away, but some things are clear.
Watching apes was the most popular behavior, and visitors lingered more in the airy naturalistic environment than in the previous concrete-and-steel building.
The most popular exhibit elements were life-size hands and busts of various apes, which people touched and photographed regularly. The average visit was 15.5 minutes.
But many zoo interpretive standbys fell flat. Just about everyone ignored a looping video describing behavioral research on apes at the adjoining Lester E. Fisher Center. They likewise ignored graphics beside actual apes that described a “day in the life” . . . of apes.
People learned by watching apes that acted as they do in the wild.
It was an epiphany for Gillespie that came on one of her last observations. In February, a young mother brought her 1-year-old daughter to the chimp enclosure where Kipper, a young male, showed off for the girl through the glass. The mother and daughter were delighted by the connection.
“You knew that this was such a special moment that they would remember,” Gillespie said. “And maybe that would be more impactful. Even though they weren’t reading signs.”
I fully believe every time a new exhibit is proposed, designers should spend at least one day watching how visitors use the old exhibit, and / or similar exhibits (to that proposed) at other zoos. Additionally, we need to instate an industry standard of post-opening visitor behavior research. Most institutions do some amount of study post-opening, but that information is rarely passed onto the designers. Designers need to be proactive and spend some time at their creations, truly critiquing the successes and failures. Only then will we be truly able to truly be experts.
Most of us are aware of the tiger escape and subsequent attack that occurred last Christmas at the San Francisco Zoo. The attack has spurned much controversy from the public (look at the comments on the YouTube videos below), and also within the zoo community regarding the “guidelines” the AZA puts forth.
The most recent published guidelines recommended 16′ height on moats and with 25′ width, and 20′ height on walls. San Francisco’s exhibit had 15′ height moat. I’m unsure of the width. However, they’ve subsequently gone back and built additional height to the public side of the exhibit.
The topic demonstrates the fact that we can never be too safe when it comes to both animal safety and human safety (keeper and visitor). However, at some point, we’re overdesigning to the point that the experience of visiting the zoo becomes more prison-like with 20 foot walls everywhere.
In this case, some evidence has been provided that the victims of the attack could have been taunting the tiger. These instances are such that any animal could find a way to escape any enclosure. Should we design for those instances? Or should we design for day to day safety?
This is a similar question to how many people should we be designing for? Peak day, where the park is cram packed, or a more average day. In this example, we generally design for the average day (aka design day), and accept a certain degree of discomfort on peak days. Ironically, if we take this same tactic to enclosure safety, the level of discomfort in those extreme situations is much more “uncomfortable” (death isn’t exactly a “let it slide” circumstance).
For now, the AZA is redeveloping its recommendations for tiger barriers. Bare in mind these are simply recommendations, and zoos have every right not to follow the minimums, making the walls and moats larger or smaller, if they so choose.
Ultimately, we want to avoid design flaws that make guests able to directly access an animal or an animal to access the guest (unintentionally), while still allowing the guests to see the critters. As you can see, the guests as San Francisco Zoo still love their tigers.
We’ve all been witness to, and some of us may be to blame for, the red boomer balls in tiger exhibits or the blue barrels in the polar bears habitat. I’ve heard guests laugh about beer kegs in the bear exhibits, implying in some manner that the bear’s an alcoholic. Positively enjoyable for the guests and the bear, but still a problem as they bring a wholly artificial element into an otherwise “natural” setting.
In an effort to curb these disruptions in our suspension of disbelief in an immersive zoo exhibit (in other words, in order for us to get rid of any sign that we are, in fact, in a zoo, and not in Borneo or Alaska), we need to start planning the enrichment as a part of the exhibit design process with the keepers.
Jon Coe wrote a nicely illustrated paper for the Australasian Regional Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria conference back in 2006. Within this paper not only does he clearly outline several concepts for enrichment devices within exhibits, but also lays out some general guidelines. Take a look!
The new Glacier Run exhibit area will replace the current mid-century polar bear exhibit, and take over the adjacent hillside. The old exhibit was an excellent example of modernist design infiltrating zoos. The exhibit was more of a sculputural piece than a proper animal enclosure, and the animals were clearly affected. Stereotypy was seen, and animals rarely used their pool. The exhibit was entirely concrete with no natural substrates whatsoever. The new exhibit will be greatly appreciated by the bears. 
To help avoid the critical eye of animal activists such as 
Here
Secondly, nighttime visitation allows people to avoid the peak heat of summer days, and will theoretically increase their stay time. Additionally, many animals displayed in zoos are crepuscular (active during dawn and dusk) or nocturnal, and therefore, will be the most active during evening hours. Animal activity always equates increased stay times.
