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"Immersive, inexpensive": at a conference in Kaliningrad they told how to properly design a zoo (photo, video)
The first conference "Design and Planning of Zoos" will be held at the Regional Center from October 14 to 18. More than 100 participants gathered from all over the country and abroad, including Belarus, Poland and the Netherlands. The event began at the Kaliningrad Zoo. There are few institutions in Russia responsible for creating such institutions. Organizations need to attract non-specialized experts. For example, one of the enclosures of the Kaliningrad Zoo was made by the same company that was initially engaged in the restoration of the temple, said Director Svetlana Sokolova.
The highlight of the conference was the presentation by Dutch zoo designer Erik van Vliet. He wrote a book published in Russian. As he ironically put it, the work “Animal Exhibition in a Zoo” “makes the artist unnecessary.” Erik offers several design solutions that will help make the zoo more “exciting and attractive to visitors” without increasing construction costs. For example, the designers suggest creating something similar to a safari, when there are not so many bars and other distracting materials between the animals and the public. He also claims that it is important to observe “height differences,” when zoo visitors are below the animals in cages.
Immersion (from English immersive - "being, immersion") is a method of perception that creates the effect of immersion in an artificially created environment, specially created conditions. In the context of zoo design, we mean the participation of viewers in observing the lives of animals, the opportunity to "touch the animals."
The Kaliningrad Zoo is one of the three largest zoos in terms of tourist flows, along with the Curonian Spit and all branches of the World Maritime Museum. This makes it an important attraction for visitors to the city. In addition to the zoo's enormous history, I would like to note that... in recent years, there have been major changes and many good solutions have been implemented," the Dutch designer emphasized.
Anton Drozdov, director of the Moscow bird park Malinki, agreed with his Dutch colleague: "Building a good zoo costs as much as building a bad zoo." This phrase became the main idea of the meeting. Holding these meetings helps to solve the problem of lack of information about appropriate design. In the fight against this, the manual published after the conference will be useful. It will teach you how to avoid mistakes in a zoo. Sometimes this is a very expensive mistake.