Foster + Partners to transform the Snowdon Aviary by Cedric Price at the London Zoo
14/09/2017.
[LON] UK
metalocus, ÁNGEL BLANCO
metalocus, ÁNGEL BLANCO
Foster + Partners’ plans for the rebirth of the Snowdon Aviary at ZSL London Zoo have received planning approval from Westminster Council.
Model. New ZSL London Zoo’s Snowdon Aviary by Foster + Partners. Image by Tom Miller. Image courtesy of Foster + Partners.
Drawing. New ZSL London Zoo’s Snowdon Aviary by Foster + Partners. Image courtesy of Foster + Partners.
New ZSL London Zoo’s Snowdon Aviary by Foster + Partners. Image by Tom Miller
Snowdon Aviary at London Zoo, England 16.08.2009.
Aviary designed by Lord Snowdon and Cedric Price in 1962-5 as part of a wider expansion and modernisation of London Zoo. The Aviary is an aluminium and steel structure on concrete foundations. Access is provided via a cantilevered concrete bridge which spans the length of the structure.
The Grade II* listed structure, designed by Cedric Price with Frank Newby and Lord Snowdon in 1962, was, and still is a sensational statement. It was the first aviary in Britain that gave visitors a ‘walk-through’ experience, bringing them closer to the birds in their natural habitat. The new design adapts the heritage structure to suit its new inhabitants – a troop of colobus monkeys and parrots – and offers visitors an enhanced experience. It replicates their natural habitat, with a series of vertical elements at different heights that the monkeys can climb onto, encouraging them to leap, jump, and swing to the higher levels of the aviary.
Norman Foster, Founder and Executive Chairman, Foster + Partners said.- “The rebirth of the Snowdon Aviary continues our work with historical structures. It is about the fusion of the old and new, but also about repurposing this extraordinary structure. The brand-new walk-though home will allow it to extend its role for decades to come. It will ensure the preservation of an iconic structure and honour its distinguished authors from the past, while preserving a unique built example of Cedric Price’s work.”
The proposal also features an education and community space for Zoo visitors. Hosting up to 30 people, the indoor space will allow school groups to learn more about the colobus monkeys, their habitat and conservation, ZSL’s history and about the architectural legacy of the Zoo.
We’re delighted that the Council has recognised the value of the restoration of ZSL London Zoo’s Snowdon Aviary, and has granted us planning permission to carry out this exciting work. The new exhibit is set to be turned into a walk-through colobus monkey enclosure, which will give visitors a unique and up-close experience of the stunning primates. Our plans for the Aviary will both improve its use as an important habitat for our animals and ensure it serves as an educational hub for the millions of people who visit the Zoo to be inspired by wildlife - while recognising its heritage status and prominent position on the Regent’s Canal.
Professor David Field, Zoological Director
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NORMAN FOSTER
Norman Foster is considered by many to be the most prominent architect in Britain. He won the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2009 Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes Prize.
Lord Foster rebuilt the Reichstag as a new German Parliament in Berlin and designed a contemporary Great Court for the British Museum. He linked St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tate Modern with the Millennium Bridge, a steel footbridge across the Thames. He designed the Hearst Corporation Building in Manhattan, at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue.
He was born in Manchester, England, in 1935. Among his firm’s many other projects are London’s City Hall, the Bilbao Metro in Spain, the Canary Wharf Underground Station in London and the renovated courtyard of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
In the 1970s, Lord Foster was one of the most visible practitioners of high-tech architecture that fetishized machine culture. His triumphant 1986 Hong Kong and Shanghai bank building, conceived as a kit-of-parts plugged into a towering steel frame, was capitalism's answer to the populist Pompidou Center in Paris.
Nicolai Ouroussoff, The Times’s architecture critic, has written that although Lord Foster’s work has become sleeker and more predictable in recent years, his forms are always driven by an internal structural logic, and they treat their surroundings with a refreshing bluntness.
Awarded the Prince of Asturias of the Arts 2009.
CEDRIC PRICE
Cedric Price (1934–2003) was an architect, thinker and above all an Englishman of extraordinary generosity towards his subject. He had an independence of mind the like of which can only come from a fondness for humans and a fascination for human nature. For Price, the moral and ethical principles implied in any design speculation are privileged over and above variations on the artefactual by-product. In this respect the role of the many rich collaborations over his lifetime, conversations and talks amongst audiences, engaging with the media as a means of initiating discussion, and the more personal dialogue presented in his notebooks were all critical in developing his design thinking on the themes of participation, anticipation, indeterminacy and delight. The films and drawings from Price’s personal notebooks that appear in the exhibition present Price doing what he did best over a period of 40 years – constantly challenging our understanding of what architecture might be, in discussions with students, colleagues, strangers and himself.
