PHOTO: © BJARKE INGELS GROUP
Panda House at Copenhagen Zoo Copenhagen, Denmark Opening: Q4 2018 Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is working on a US$22m (€20m, £17m) enclosure at Copenhagen Zoo to house two giant pandas on loan from Chengdu in China – a gesture of goodwill from the Chinese government following Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark’s visit to the country in 2014. BIG’s design features a circularshaped enclosure to represent the Chinese yin-yang symbol, with each half separately housing the female and male panda. The ground floor of the Panda House will house a restaurant, allowing visitors to observe the pandas while dining. Danish landscape architects Schonherr are creating the enclosure’s environment, matched as closely as possible to the pandas’ natural habitat, with careful planting of trees and bamboo to provide plenty of shade, as well as climbing trees, rocks, logs, waterfalls, pools and streams to provide stimulation. The two pandas are due to arrive in late 2018. “In the case of the two great pandas, their unique solitary nature requires two similar but separate habitats – one for her and one for him. We’ve made the entire enclosure accessible from 360º, turning the pandas into the new rotation point for the zoo,” explains BIG founder Bjarke Ingels. ■ http://lei.sr?a=h1C1E
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The panda enclosure replicates an enormous yin-yang symbol ATTRACTIONS HANDBOOK 2017-2018
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