Simulated Environments for Animals

[Image: The Zoo de Vincennes, by Beckmann N'Thepe].

These are some plans for a new zoological park in Vincennes, France. The zoo's landscapes are designed by TN PLUS Landscape Architects, its buildings by Paris architects Beckmann N'Thepe.
The project is noteworthy for, among other things, what could be called its simulated geology.

[Image: Landscapes in the Zoo de Vincennes, designed by TN PLUS Landscape Architects].

These artificial earthforms will contain simulated environments within which animals will live. The whole complex will encompass 15 hectares and six "biozones," and it will run partly on solar power.

[Image: The Zoo de Vincennes, by Beckmann N'Thepe].

The park's "biozones" include the savannah, the equatorial African rain forest, Patagonia, French Guiana, Madagascar, and Europe.

[Image: More landscapes in the Zoo de Vincennes, by TN PLUS Landscape Architects].

So the zoo – like all zoos, of course – will be a simulation intended for animals. Zoos, in other words, are a particularly bizarre form of trans-species communication, attempted on the level of architecture and landscape design.
They're like hieroglyphs that animals inhabit – spaces defined entirely by their ability to refer to something they are not.

[Images: Zooscapes by TN PLUS Landscape Architects].

More information, if you read French, is available in this PDF.

[Image: The Zoo de Vincennes, by Beckmann N'Thepe].

And I have to say that the renderings of this place look pretty cool.
But why do we only build zoos like this? Why not suburbs or college campuses? You mold landforms out of reinforced concrete, and you install artificial waterfalls and fake rivers, and you grow rare orchids under the cover of geodesic domes. And then your grandkids can grow up in a savannah-themed suburb outside Orlando. The next town over, kids run around through giant fern trees, chasing parrots.
Perhaps themed biozones are the future of suburban design?

[Image: The Zoo de Vincennes, by Beckmann N'Thepe].

Google opens a new administrative complex outside London – on the grounds of a former zoo. Your "cubicle" is partly outside.
Hidden nozzles mist your neck on every lunch break.

[Image: The Zoo de Vincennes, by Beckmann N'Thepe].

(Zoo de Vincennes discovered by Architectural Record).