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Night Safari Four Years After: A Post-occupancy Review

by Michael Graetz and Simon Corder

2. Development

The construction was quite an undertaking.  The Zoo’s Director, Bernard Harrison remarked to me (M.G.) as we toured the site one day that, “not many zoo people get to build a whole zoo from scratch”.  The scale of the development was dawning on us.  More than sixty exhibits, a road network, complete services reticulation and strict anti-pollution measures to protect the reservoir from animal wastes had to be designed and built within not-quite-virgin forest.  The anti-pollution features alone took twenty percent of the US$46 million project.

Sensitivity to the site and existing vegetation was important.  Once forest trees were lost they could never be replaced.  The Night Safari site contained roughly 7,000 trees with a girth of a metre or more and a myriad of lesser size.  Changes had to be made to erstwhile firm plans to save specific trees.  There were few areas where we could thoroughly transform the site, clearing and reshaping the topography. Only about ten percent of the site had undergone clearance in the past and was covered with typical wasteland vegetation.  Therefore, the site generally lent itself to intimate, close up views of animals in deep forest rather than panoramas typical of East African safaris.

As the construction phase came to and end, the test was in how the animals would appear and behave at night.  When one considers that most of the lighting had to be installed even before the major landscaping, it was as much a test of the lighting system we had devised as of animal behaviour.

In contrast to the creation of wilderness scenes viewed at night, we designed safe, friendly environments with a pleasant tropical ambience for visitor areas.  Consideration of the comfort and experience of visitors remains an on going concern.  The most mundane activities such as queuing, ticketing getting food and even the restrooms should be treated as part of the experience.

For example, the toilets were designed with an external wall removed and a high, pitched and raftered ceiling.  These spaces open on to enclosed gardens with informal ornamental tropical plants bathed in warm up-lighting that supplements the general lighting (see below). This is an example of design appropriate to the climate and was inspired by the domestic bathing and toilet facilities typical in Bali, where the facilities are typically under the main roof but open to a walled garden.

Choosing to run the trams along a route independent of the walking trail system enabled us to use drive through exhibits extensively.  We also placed carnivore species in moated enclosures within some of these drive-throughs.  Some such drive-throughs have moated small carnivore exhibits within them, such as for red dhole (Cuon alpinus) within a Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus) drive-through or golden jackal (Canis aureus) with sambar deer (Cervus unicolor).

We also used cable structures for cages and found that darkness made it relatively easy to make the mesh disappear.  Visitors feel they are looking out of a window rather than into a cage if the mesh is angled away from sight lines and a dark zone inside the perimeter is permitted.  (Glass is only used with explicitly man-made shelters both to control reflections and to make plausible the glass.  A variation on this idea is the use of nylon aviary netting over a mixed exhibit of gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), flying fox (Pteropus vampyrus), several aquatic birds and owls.

As stated above, care was taken to preserve as much of the existing vegetation as possible.  The road deviated from the plan often to avoid major trees; boardwalks were used to protect the root systems of important trees along walking trails.  Another means of doing the least damage to the forest was to sacrifice some undergrowth to create hardstand areas of broken brick (for drainage) topped with sand or granite dust.  These were used where animals would inevitably wear the substrate as with the Indian rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis) and most hoofed animals.

Despite our concern over security in this novel situation we experimented with new barriers and techniques.  A very simple and cheap barrier for bearded pigs (Sus barbatus oi). It is literally an earth ditch about 1.2 to 1.5 metres across and 0.5 to 1.0 metres deep.  Welded mesh is laid across it on steel pipes, which works similar to a cattle grid.  The barrier’s effectiveness is reinforced with hot wire.

Generally, the night is forgiving of barriers and the damage that many animals do to exhibits that would be visible by day.  However this does not mean the usual site analysis and care with design can be abandoned.  The ground plane of the seladang, or Indian gaur (Bos gaurus) exhibit for example is rather unsightly during the day.  But even with careful lighting, the tired appearance of the substrate does not look a great deal better at night. Comparison with another wild cattle exhibit, banteng (Bos javanicus), illustrates the point.  The substrate and vegetation is as worn as with the gaur.  The exhibit is saved, however, by the slightly higher ground plane of the banteng exhibit area relative to the roadway, the distance between the road and the moat, and the vegetation, which obscures the feet (and hence the ground on which they stand) of the animals.

Another example of the effect of changing viewing relationships is the capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris) exhibit.  In this case the site topography places the exhibit surface around 1.5 metres below the road surface.  Despite being referred to as the largest living rodent, they are less impressive than if viewed from the down slope side, i.e. from the rear of the exhibit.  The ground plane lies within a narrower angle in the field of view and the capybaras are elevated above the viewing plane.  The animals are therefore emphasised as well as background and foreground vegetation rather than the bare areas between.

In our review of existing exhibits, we have identified this as one positive change as well as to make this a drive-through exhibit, with the substrate largely converted to wetland.

These approaches to exhibit design involve well-established principles applicable to diurnal zoos.  As lighting was a complete novelty during the genesis years, we are only beginning to modify our design strategies in response and to avoid mistakes that are difficult to fix just with lighting.  The next section discusses some basic lighting concepts needed to understand the approach we took at the outset to the unique challenge of lighting the Night Safari.



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