INTRODUCTION For 48 years La Garenne zoo had occupied a site below the village of Le Vaud .In 2013 a project took shape to move the entire zoo to a much bigger neighbouring site. A new concept was developed, featuring an educational trail that links up the various aviaries and enclosures, moving from a pastoral landscape to an alpine setting and ending with a treetop walkway among the trees of the local forest. LOCALARCHITECTURE was commissioned to design an entrance pavilion for the new zoo. The key challenge for the architects was therefore to incorporate into this setting a built structure that would provide the necessary entrance functions and define the new identity of La Garenne zoo. LIMITS Right from the start of their research the architects focused on the question of limits and boundaries – an inherent aspect of a zoological park: the park perimeters, access ways and entrances, public areas, barriers formed by plants and by built structures, etc. The entrance pavilion itself is a boundary, aligned as it is with the natural border formed by the strip of woodland along Route Du Bois-Laurent at the lower end of the site. The pavilion building is the only way of accessing the site, acting as a filter between the outside world and the reinvented natural world of the zoological park.
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