Project: A conceptual study for a new visitor centre and gorilla house, London Zoo.
Value: Undisclosed
Client: London Zoo
Status: Competition Entry

This project was an unusual opportunity to pitch to a live jury panel in front of a gallery audience for a faux project to design a gorilla enclosure for London Zoo. As one of three invited practices to take part, the pitch formed the closing event of the 2008 RIBA Small Practice Conference; Guerrilla Tactics.

Given the context for the pitch, Duggan Morris took the opportunity to invest real thinking into the principles of designing enclosures for dangerous and increasingly rare species of animals. The starting point for our strategy, was to turn the subject-voyeur relationship through 180 degrees, placing the gorillas in a more prominent position of control, enabling them to take a more forceful ownership of their landscape, whilst humans took a secondary role in the composition.

The resulting concept, created a roof top gorilla landscape of rocky outcrops, tropical trees and other species native to their natural environments, under which the visitor centre was located. To view the gorillas, outposts of protective glass enclosures were distributed around the roof, access from underneath. In this way, rather than the current relationship where the animals are surrounded by human visitors, the visitors in this case, are surrounded by the gorillas and landscape. A true visitor and animal experience.