Macaws Deserve good Design Too

This just in from one of our readers and dear friends. The Architecture firm of Enric Batlle and Joan Roig has constructed new cages for the Macaw population in Barcellona’s Parc de la Ciutadella

This just in from one of our readers and dear friends. The Architecture firm of Enric Batlle and Joan Roig has constructed new cages for the Macaw population in Barcellona’s Parc de la Ciutadella. From ArchDaily:

The palm grove in the Parc de la Ciutadella is a small 1,500 sqm garden made up of a wide collection of palm trees of different heights and a thick tropical bush vegetation. It has always been used as an habitat for the macaws. Its remote location and the noisy and colorful presence of the birds turn it into an exotic oasis inside the park and a unique place inside the city…

The project focused on the cage design, which is complex enough to arrange the garden through the path of the visitor by its repetition.

The main criterion was arranging the cages in an apparently random way making them always offer different perspectives, creating a system than can be perceived as a picturesque system lacking of any rule and continuously surprising. Its immersion into the palm grove looks for coexistence, respecting its hidden nature and increasing its exoticism.

We’re not completely convinced of the “apparent randomness” factor and we’d really like to find out how the design has influenced the resident Macaws (as we think back to Temple Grandin and her observations of animal behavior we can’t help but think that one of the largest and smartest species of birds would have an opinion of their new environment). And while it’s clear that these mini-zoos don’t make any claims to rethink the anthropocentric nature of zoo design, we do think these are rather handsome and well thought abodes for some of the worlds most impressive birds.

photos: Eva Serrats, Wenzel

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