Many zoos are creating new, more modern, more animal friendly and just looking better. But even in hte last few years, there are still examples of terrible new exhibits. What are good examples you can give ?
The First example from which comes to my mid is the Ankor Wat area in the Zoo Osnabrück. First off all the exhibits are for such a new complex way to smal. Espicially the orangutan enclosure. It is way to over themed, in such a way that it not only looks fake and frankly bad. But it reduces the living quality of the animals. Why would macaques benefit to live on a concrete mountain. I think apes like Orangutans could need a bit more space
Bear exhibits in Rostov zoo, completed 2011. Bears and concrete are virtually inseparable in Russia. Only exceptions are Izhevsk (exhibits built in 2008) and Moscow (historical exhibits) that have natural substrate areas for non-polar bears. Also the worst penguin exhibit (2014) in private Volgograd oceanarium
The Striped Skunk exhibit at Menominee Park Zoo is only about a year old, and that's no place to hide. It's basically just a room with nothing in it but a skunk and a couple of cat toys.
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo's Scutes Family Gallery, as I've said here before, is very aesthetically unpleasing, and the husbandry for some of their residents is questionable. Indianapolis's Simon Skjodt International Orangutan Center is a huge eye-sore, and well, a colossal waste of money as many of us can agree here. There's a few more which I'll get to later if I don't forget.
How can we forget Columbus’ Adventure Cove? Specifically the animal encounters village, the sea lion and stingray exhibits look fine to me.
I think the take away from this thread so far is that animal exhibits based on human architecture and buildings can be really easy to mess up.
Adventure Cove's Animal Encounter Village in Columbus Zoo, definitely qualifies. I mean seriously, of all the ways they could've designed those exhibits, they have to do it in the most unaesthetic way possible. They are probably hands down the worst exhibit to be built on AZA zoos in the last ten years.
Roger Williams Park Zoo Faces of the Rainforest is another exhibit that could easily be considered amongst the worst new exhibits in the AZA. Not only does it waste space, many parts of it are considerably less natural than the exhibit it replaced and I do not believe the cost of the building justified the end result. The building may look cool on the outside, and the additions of giant otters and piping guans are exciting, but I do think the exhibit could have been significantly better executed, and have been designed in a way such that less space was wasted. Even if they wanted the building to be the current size, they could have designed in a way so that the kangaroo walkthrough didn't need to be abolished and so that maned wolves were not dropped from the plan, and returned king vultures to the area.
I feel like Columbus’s Animal Encounters Village was meant to have a “household” aesthetic but fails in its execution. Toledo’s Nature’s Neighborhood does a much better job with this IMO
