30、Special educational materials for zoos – The architecture of a zoo

 

Wenchi Lin

Taipei Zoo

 

Seldom do visitors notice the architecture at a zoo because they commonly think that the building facilities serve only as shelters for animals. In fact, zoo designers build houses for animals that are more complex in design than those for humans. For designers, many aspects are considered: size, shape, color, light, air conditioning and ventilation, visitors’ capacity during heavy traffic flow etc. And recently, display areas that include both outdoors and indoors are required to be “educational”. What does this mean? How to achieve the goal?
This paper presents the idea of some animal display houses at Taipei Zoo. As a result we can understand why animal display areas are designed and how they serve the function of “education”. Finally, from the aspect of education, it is a certainty that two kinds of customers will be satisfied: animals and visitors.