cacti-facti
The Zoo
A world, a forest, a jungle, a tundra, a desert, a beach, an iceberg, a steppe, a plain, a mountain, and a swamp –funneled into a fence. Zoos are human abstractions of animal environments, often using symbolic components of the animal inhabitant’s indigenous environment to alleviate the geometrical strain of man-made boundaries. This synthetic geometry, created by humans, is the antithesis of a ‘natural’ environment. It is due to the fact that the notion of ‘space’ does not exist in the animal kingdom. Animal space is territory. The enclosure presents an illusion of a natural environment. Yet this environment is designed to maintain a separation between the contained and the container. The physiognomy of the animal determines the design of the cage. The zoo is a simultaneously static and dynamic place, in which organisms move but environments are constant/ static/ permanent. Concrete trees. Geometric crystals enclose a fluidly wild content. The enclosed spaces allow humans to view the captured through mediums of architectural perception: the section and the plan. The vantage points slice through a fabricated ecosystem in order to idealize the life of the inhabitant. The architecture of the cage assists the visualization of western philosophies like zoology, botany, and anthropology. It is an objectification tool.
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