ZSL Visitors Centre, London

ZSL Visitors Centre, London

Projects 9

Delivered: 2008 Fall

Tutors: Ángela Gª de Paredes + Moisés Royo

TU: López Peláez

Situated on the heart of Regent’s Park, the ZSL Visitors Centre provides with the access to London Zoo. The park area is like an island inside the urban context. The aim of the design is to create an island, comprising zoo installations and new facilities, inside the park existing island.

The strategy leading the project was to analyze the location of the trees and paths and translated them into geometry. Using tangencies, the project appears ordering the inner and outer spaces in the island.

In form, the building is like a covered path guiding pedestrians to the ticket office. The simple recurrence structure is made of plywood, like it was a forest of trunks. The plan is suited to the path’s form. There is an inner walkway for temporary exhibition, dividing the programme in two areas. The most public area comprises the southern part, including the auditorium, cafeteria, library, bookshop and permanent exhibition. The most private items are located opposite, including laboratories, research rooms and administrative offices, dividing the whole height of the building in two storeys. These two different issues are provided with a narrow bay of servant spaces. The ticket office is a replica of the main building, with the same pattern but less height. The rest of land is filled with an open-air theatre, playgrounds for children and water flows, following the same geometrical strategies.

The elevations are made of thermochip sandwich panels and glass or rabbet polycarbonate panels to let the light in. The interior areas are illuminated by horizontal square spans on the roof. The space inside the building is separated with different class of natural hanged walls, depending on the relationship between them. Therefore, there are three different ways of construct these walls: whole bamboo sticks piled up to get high permeability; half-bamboo sticks quincunx sewn to get medium permeability; cork tiles wall to get no permeability and high sound absorption.