NADIA LLOYD-LISTER

Abstract

Twenty-eight year-old Laula resides in the north-western corner of the National Zoological Gardens (NZG). She is one of the zoo’s most beloved residents. As great as that is, being queen of the zoo doesn’t come without its challenges. Earlier this year, Laula tragically fell ill; and while this is nothing that the zoo’s dedicated staff couldn’t manage, it was Laula’s size and the limitations of the zoo’s medical facilities that made what should have been a routine treatment into a complicated affair. Laula is a 285kg Kodiak bear. She was too big and too heavy to receive treatment in the zoo’s existing hospital, nor could she be brought to the surgery room because access exists only through the administration area and through a retrofitted passage from the courtyard. This left no other option but to treat her in her enclosure. As a result, the staff were not able to keep with the field’s best practices, and Laula was put at risk of further medical complications. 

Laula represents but one case of the zoo needing to make concessions on the standard of care they are able to offer its residents because of lack of needed facilities. It would be sad enough if the problem was contained to just the zoo, but when the 2014 Living Planet Report has measured a 52% decline in biodiversity in the past 40 years, it would be flagrant irresponsiblility to confine that the challenges like the aforementioned were confined to the National Zoological Gardens alone—rather, this is but one instance of a global concern.

The National Research Foundation has recognized the zoo as a critical player towards the conservation of animal heritage in southern Africa. Yet, as we have seen, tantamount to having outstanding research methods is having the needed facilities to deploy them effectively. In order for this to come to bare, the zoo requires a careful assessment of architectural concerns. This thesis presents exactly those. 

 

The wildlife medical centre here proposed precipitates out of a comprehensive study engaging the following issues of concern; zoo healthcare and rehabilitation, subnature and animal architecture. In applying the framework “form follows function”, the issue of “animals as architects” was identified as a concern unique to this study, as well as it was the foundation for its central concept.

The proposed site location currently supports the out-dated hospital (built in 1969), which is on the zoo’s south-eastern corner along Boom Street. As such, demolition of the location’s existing facility is a required antecedent to this proposal’s measures.

Its facilities include a veterinary hospital ,research laboratories, a bio-bank, temporary wards, and rehabilitation wards whose design derives not only from traditional matters of architectural concern but also the informed, first-hand knowledge of the animals’ needs and preferences as understood by the zoo’s staff.

Additionally, the proposed design exposes and showcases the zoo’s research facilities along its public interface in order to better serve its educational efforts. This intervention brings to life a new way of perceiving the animals. To see the animals in their most fragile state can make accessible to the visitor a level of empathy that heretofore could only be known by their caretakers. Thus, this proposal presents the means for promoting conservation awareness and, at the same time, empowers its dedicated staff.