Designwire Daily: from the editors of Interior Design magazine

Beckmann N’Thépé and TN Plus Re-Up for Russia’s Saint Petersburg Zoo

by Nicholas Tamarin | Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Beckmann N’Thépé and TN Plus are off to where the wild things are. Following on the heels, er, hoofs, of the respective architecture and landscape design firms collaboration on the renovation of Vincennes Zoo in their home turf of Paris and the Helsinki’s zoological park, the team has once again united to create a massive new park for Russia’s Saint Petersburg Zoo.

Founded in 1865 and the country’s oldest zoological park, the Saint Petersburg zoos 3474 animals from 479 species suffer from confining conditions with a location in the smack in the middle of the town center. But they’ll be running free—or as free as captive animals can be–when architects Aldrich Beckmann and Françoise N’Thépé and landscape designers Bruno Tanant and Jean Christophe Nani complete the 1.16 mile site on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg.

The zoo’s design is based on the Paleolithic-era super continent known as Pangea. An archipelago of biologically diverse man-made islands representing South East Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, North America, and Eurasia, the last two linked by an icy Artic Pole. The ecosystems will be connected by a series of pedestrian walkways spanning the wooded site’s natural waterways.

The pet project is expected to be completed in 2014.

Images courtesy of Beckmann N’Thépé and TN Plus.