Zoos & Aquariums

Chapter 2

Designing

Animal-Specific Habitats

Asian elephants:
Elephant House, Sapporo Maruyama Zoo

Elephants are another animal whose numbers have been dwindling in their natural habitat. With the difficulties of breeding in captivity and strict restrictions on importing, elephants are disappearing from one Japanese zoo after the other. Still, upon increasing resident demand, Sapporo Maruyama Zoo successfully negotiated with the Myanmar government to acquire four Asian elephants (one bull and three females) to open the new elephant house in March 2019. The zoo’s goals are to sustain elephant life and pass on herd tending and breeding practices similar to the elephants' nature to the next generation. To that end, Daiken Sekkei developed an advanced tending ground in the new elephant house for them to live comfortably despite the cold regional climate. Boasting one of Japan's largest open habitats, the grounds are designed to let the elephants behave naturally, allowing the herd to walk around freely in search of food and comfortable spaces without having to turn around.

Point 01

A comfortable elephant habitat with low environmental loads in a cold region

Reducing environmental load and lifecycle cost are both important factors in maintaining an indoor living environment for warm weather animals like elephants in the cold of Sapporo. This required a variety of innovations, including exterior insulation and a reverse beam truss roof for minimized air mass to reduce air conditioning load in the indoor open habitat, natural lighting from skylights to reduce lighting load, and Japan's first circulating filtration system in an elephant house to reduce water charges.

Point 02

Flexible layout for semi-protected contact

Accidents are commonplace in handling elephants. At the new elephant house, the zoo uses semi-protected contact, in which the handlers do not enter the spaces where the elephants are, but rather tend to the elephants through purpose-made barriers. The ground layout has many doors and partitions to flexibly handle various contact situations. This environment both keeps elephant stress low and ensures their safety.

Point 03

The herd is given free reign of the house all day long

In contrast to most Japanese elephant houses where each elephant is given their own pen, this house has no pens. Instead, the elephants are left to roam free and move as a herd throughout the house all day long. Our design improves the elephant's habitat with numerous contrivances to increase their options. Some of these include bright spaces lit by natural light from the skylights, a sand floor, a pool with selectable depths, timer-controlled feed baskets that lower from the ceiling, and heaters to create different temperatures throughout the house.