Elephant House Copenhagen Zoo: Building Image, Architect, Location, Photos

Copenhagen Elephant House, Denmark

Nye Elefanthus: Danish Architecture design by Foster + Partners, Architects

page updated 23 August 2021 ; 2 Sep 2016; 10 Jun 2008

New Elephant House – Copenhagen Zoo

Location: Roskildevej 32

Date built: 2007

Architect: Foster + Partners, UK

Nye Elefanthus:

Photos by Nigel Young of Foster + Partners

Elephant House Copenhagen

10 Jun 2008

Elephant House opens at Copenhagen Zoo

The new Elephant House at Copenhagen Zoo opened today following an official ceremony attended by His Royal Highness the Prince Consort of Denmark and his grandson, Prince Christian.

This new Elephant House provides these magnificent animals with a stimulating environment, including easily accessible spaces for the public to enjoy them, and restores the visual relationship between the zoo and the park.

The project has been driven by research into the behavioural patterns of elephants. The tendency for bull elephants in the wild to roam away from the main herd prompted a plan organised around two separate enclosures. Covered with lightweight, glazed domes to provide natural light, these enclosures are designed to bring a sense of light and openness to a building type traditionally characterised as closed.

The spaces maintain a strong visual connection with the sky and changing patterns of daylight and the distinctive ‘fritting’ on the glazing simulates a canopy of trees. The varying levels on the site are exploited in cross-section.

Nigel Young_Foster + Partners

The elephant enclosures are set deep into the ground, ensuring excellent insulation on the perimeter walls and a natural fusion with the landscape. Additionally, the glazed domes have opening windows to allow natural ventilation and there is a heat recovery system – further enhancing the environmental efficiency of the scheme.

Nigel Young_Foster + Partners

Elephant House design by Foster + Partners

The Elephant House is Foster + Partners’ first zoological building. Inserted into the natural contours of the site, it replaces a structure dating from 1914 and sets new standards in zoological design, providing the animals with a stimulating environment that recreates aspects of their former Asian habitat.

It is built with a warm terracotta-coloured concrete and the yellow beach-like sand that naturally existed on the site has been recycled to create the paddocks. The colours and textures convey a sense of the dry riverbed as found at the edge of the rainforest – a favourite haunt of Asian elephants.

With mud holes, scattered pools of water and shading objects, the new Elephant House is a place where the animals can play and interact naturally. Broad public viewing terraces run around the domes externally, while a ramped promenade leads down into an educational space, looking into the enclosures along the way.

Spencer de Grey, Senior Executive and Head of Design said:
“As our first zoo project, we were asked to create a new enclosure for a herd of Asian Elephants in Denmark’s renowned Copenhagen Zoo. We have designed a building that not only responds to the animals’ natural behaviour, but is also a seamless insertion into the landscape that uses the site’s natural properties to provide thermal insulation. We are delighted to learn that the elephants are enjoying their new home.”

Nigel Young_Foster + Partners

Designed by Sir Norman Foster, architect of famous buildings such as Swiss Re, Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank and Chep Lap Kok Airport

Elephant House Copenhagen architects – Foster & Partners architects

Proposed underground Elephant House extension, similar to the Welsh project by Norman Foster some years back

Topping-out images:

images : Nigel Young, from Foster + Partners

Copenhagen Zoo Opening Hours
(check with the operators, correct as of early 2006)
The Zoo is open every day in the year

Copenhagen Zoo – Address:
Roskildevej 32, Box 7, DK-2000 Frederiksberg

Tel +45 72 200 200 / Information: +45 72 200 280

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Zoo

Photo of the Elephant House development from across the park:

Zoo building photo 27 Aug 2006 © Adrian Welch

images : Foster + Partners

Copenhagen Zoo is the most visited cultural institution in Denmark, attracting over 1.2 million visitors a year and is set within an historic royal park, adjacent to the Fredriksberg Palace.

The carefully considered landscape, designed by Stig L Andersson, seeks to reinforce the relationship between the zoo and the adjacent royal park and provides the public with more accessible viewing and educational facilities.

images : Foster + Partners

New standards have been set in terms of the elephants’ well-being. The main herd enclosure will, for the first time, enable elephants in captivity to spend the night together, as they would in the wild.

The ‘fritting’ pattern on the glazed roof canopies was created by sampling four species of tree. A computer script was written to rotate, scale and randomly populate the roof, so that no two ‘leaves’ are the same. The overlapping pattern provides naturalistic dappled light.