Elephant House, Copenhagen Zoo

Set within a historic royal park, adjacent to the Fredriksberg Palace, Copenhagen Zoo is the largest cultural institution in Denmark, attracting over 1.2 million visitors a year. Among the Zoo's more than 3,000 animals, its group of Indian elephants is perhaps its most popular attraction. Replacing a structure dating from 1914, this new Elephant House seeks to restore the visual relationship between the zoo and the park and to provide these magnificent animals with a stimulating environment, with easily accessible spaces from which to enjoy them.

Research into the social patterns of elephants, together with a desire to bring a sense of light and openness to a building type traditionally characterised as closed, even fortified, provided powerful starting points. The tendency for bull elephants in the wild to roam away from the main herd suggested a plan form organised around two separate enclosures, which are dug into the site, both to minimise the buildings impact in the landscape and to optimise its passive thermal performance. Covered with lightweight, glazed domes, these spaces maintain a strong visual connection with the sky and changing patterns of daylight. The elephants can congregate here, or out in the adjacent paddocks. Broad public viewing terraces run around the domes externally, while a ramped promenade leads down into an educational space, looking into the enclosures along the way. Barriers between the animals and visitors are discreet, and the paddock walls are concealed in an elongated pool of water so that the approaching visitor encounters the elephants as another surprise in the Romantic landscape of the park.

Significantly, in terms of the elephants well-being, the building sets new zoological standards. For example, the main herd enclosure will for the first time enable elephants in captivity to sleep together, as they would in the wild, while the floors are heated to keep them dry and thus maintain the health of the elephants feet. Other key aspects of the design are the result of research into the elephants natural habitat. The paddocks recreate a section of dry riverbed as found at the edge of the rainforest a favourite haunt of Asian elephants. With mud holes, scattered pools of water and shading objects, it is a place where the animals can play and interact freely.

Client: Foundation Realdania for Copenhagen Zoo
Consultants: Rambøll with Buro Happold, Davis Langdon LLP, Rambøll with Buro Happold, Stig L Andersson Architects