Beckmann-N'Thépé Signs the Future Helsinki Zoo Rehabilitation
By Bustler Editors|
Monday, Feb 23, 2009
Paris-based Beckmann-N’Thépé architects have been announced to build Helsinki’s new Korkeassari Zoo in collaboration with TN+ landscape designers.
In collaboration with TN+ landscape designers, the architects conceived an intelligent rehabilitation of the zoological island of Korkeassari from the circulation in the different biozones to the construction of a contemporary entrance edifice. Here the architecture disappears in favor of controlled geography. Beckmann-N’Thépé reinforced to insularity of the place.
Here is how the architects describe the project:
The zoological island of Korkeasaari will be cut off again. Its architectural interventions will be concentrated to make it wild and mysterious once more – a park / garden as a place of popular privilege, the nobility of the future city.
Architecture disappears in favour of controlled geography, like the resurgence of a neighboring landscape. The entrance grouping the set of utilities crucial to the running of the zoo becomes a focus of visual identity, somewhere between form and shapelessness, pierced with cavities.
Like layers of skin peeled back to receive an implant, there will be an above and a below that dialogue and interpenetrate one another. Areas of light, uncertainty, reflections and depths will be developed, offering the first emotions of a visit that will play on time and the seasons through four biozones :
- Central Asian Steppe
- Arctic Pole
- Asian Temperate Forest
- Central Asian Mountain
Design team:
Project manager: Wilfried Daufy
Architects: Anne-Catherine Dufros
Assistant architects: Constance Héau, Jessica Pallatier
Landscape design: Guillaume Derrien, Agathe Turmel
Zoo expert: Jean Marc Lernould
About Beckmann-N’Thépé architects:
Aldric Beckmann and Françoise N’Thépé founded the agency in 2001 and since then became an established office thanks to important constructions such as the well known Massena Housing Building (a brown and gold concrete edifice located in Paris XIII) as well as the Saint-Denis Housing building for which they used innovative exterior textiles they developed with Ferrari.
Beckmann-N’Thépé represented France at the International Biennale of Architecture in Venice as part as “French Touch” architects collective and their completions had been published in books such as the recent “Concrete Design” by daad editions.
Among the other current projects by the agency, the rue Saint Dominique Social Housing building (located in Paris VII) and the Marne-la-Vallée University Library near Paris are worth mentioning.
Images: Beckmann-N’Thépé architects
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