DARWINEUM, Rostock Zoo
New ape house
The DARWINEUM is much more than an ape house in the conventional sense. It is a unique combination of live zoological collection and museum exhibition. Inros Lackner, working together with Rasbach Architects and Jochen Döhler Engineers, was responsible for the structural design and for construction management. The DARWINEUM was built on an area of 11,000 square metres, on an extension to the Rostock Zoo property. The building complex consists of three building sections, a large outdoor enclosure and a ring-tailed lemur compound. The construction required sophisticated static design solutions. For example, individual roof surfaces were to be covered with plants and even trees, resulting in large loads to be designed for. The structure was analysed in terms of small individual elements and designed on the basis of an FEM model.