Sorry for the delay, wrong leaves on the tracks, any old excuse really. Recently London held an Architecture biennale, and as part of which I took my family to London Zoo. The theme of the day was Designing The Zoo of the Future. So it's monkeys in rocketships, and lions with ray guns all around. What really happened was that we got a tour of the zoo from one of the zookeepers responsible for the design of the enclosures, with a lecture on what was actually the problem the zoo faced with creating enclosures for our furry friends. Being in the heart of a city provided their first problem .... space. The big animals, lions, tigers, apes etc, need such sizes and spaces that most of the herd animals (of course I've heard of animals) have been removed to the countryside, to Whipsnade Zoo, where they get to rove free on the plains of bedfordshire. The city Zoo's now have to make use of small critters, which is why London Zoo spent a lot of money on the new Insect House. So our brief then was to spend an hour studying one of the animals, and to come up with a proposal for a new enclosure. We decided to study the Meercat. Now when I say we, my mum and dad where there, Sally's Dad, her sister, niece and grand niece. The course was aimed at children and we had conned our way in by bringing along our three and half year old grand niece, whereas the average age of our group was 45! Still we had a great day gluing together a collage of what we had seen, what we had drawn, and what we hoped our furry little friends would be able to live in the future. So if in the days to come you are buzzed by a stripy mammal with a jet engine on his back, think of us!
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