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Designing the Ark: Zoo Architecture and Its Influence on Conservation

This project takes place in 2004 and is sponsered by The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and is carried out by Wellesley College student Catherine Brinkley, who during one year is going to visit a selection of zoos in South Africa, Madagascar, China, Ukraine and Sweden. The website is designed and maintained by Jonas Persson, a Chalmers graduate in Computer Science and Engineering. Jonas will also accompany Catherine on the initial six months of her research.
"Every aspect of humanity's relationship with nature can be perceived through the bars of the zoological gardens: repulsion and fascination; the impulse to appropriate, master and understand; and the progressive recognition of the complexity and specificity of the diverse forms of life. The story of this microcosm is thus linked to vast parallel histories of colonization, ethnocentrism and the discovery of the Other. ... To tour the cages of a zoo is to understand the society that erected them." -from "Zoo" by Eric Bartay and Elizabeth Hardouin-Fugier