London Zoo's new Tiger Territory - Test 4

C2 Proficiency · Gapped Text · Cambridge English Proficiency 2, Cambridge University Press

You are going to read an article about London Zoo. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A-H the one which fits each gap (1–7). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.

London Zoo's new Tiger Territory

London Zoo, one of the oldest in the world, is an architectural jumble. Has its £3.6m Tiger Territory put things right?

However, the Tiger Territory had other constraints to grapple with. With a limited area of 36 acres in one of London's most protected settings, the zoo was forced to modify what it had – in this case, a Victorian stork and ostrich house and a 1960s sea lion viewing platform, both of which had been off-limits to visitors for 30 years.

But this heritage is a mixed blessing. Take the 1934 penguin pool, a sleek and slender double helix of ramping concrete floating above a blue oval pool. Faces tend to fall when visitors find it empty – the bright white surfaces apparently damaged the penguins' eyes, and the concrete was too hard on their feet. It now stands as an unused but still-loved relic of a bygone age.

This explains its importance as an important breeding centre for tigers. Tiger Territory's two Sumatran tigers are the most genetically important pair of tigers in Europe. With high hopes for breeding resting on the pair, their cubs would be the first to be born at the zoo for more than 15 years.

A look inside is telling: the space for visitors far exceeds the narrow nooks created for the immense creatures. The vast structure is now home to bearded pigs and pygmy hippos – tubby, low-slung creatures that seem out of place in the building's soaring, top-lit reaches.

This architectural jumble all comes to a strange climax in the stripped classical facade of the 1920s aquarium, with its arched entranceway and symmetrical windows now squeezed beneath the colossal mock-rocks of what was once Bear Mountain – itself used to house tanks of water for the fish below.

This explains why, rather than being held in by a roof, the animals have a fine net canopy stretching above their heads – even though its silken threads are made of 3 mm steel cable. The canopy soars above the treetops of Regent's Park like a giant spider's web.

Thanks to the Tiger Territory, the skyline of the zoo is now newly populated. The new enclosure boasts several mature plane trees, as well as tall wooden feeding poles fitted with pulleys that hoist big chunks of meat aloft. So, before they can sink their three-inch teeth into lunch, the animals will first have to go up them, which suits their predatory nature.

These design features demonstrate a new emphasis on animal welfare. This extends to the pairing of the animals, which was meticulously planned. But if needed, the pair can be separated, along with any future cubs, into two different parts of the enclosure, connected by a glass door.

'We have tried our best to fade into the background,' says Michael Kozdon, architect of the new £3.6m Tiger Territory at London Zoo. It's not often you hear an architect say that, but then it's not often you have a pair of endangered Sumatran tigers called Jae Jae and Melati as clients, either. 'In the past,' continues Kozdon, 'animal enclosures were all about creating an iconic architectural statement. Now the emphasis is on animal welfare, on bringing visitors as close to the creatures as possible. Our aim is to disappear.'

The enclosure's sinuous silhouette echoes the pinkish peaks of its neighbour, the Mappin Terraces, a man-made range of rocky mountains that have long poked their summits above the trees, bringing a surreal air to this strange corner of the park. Built in 1914, this elevated landscape was the result of a clause governing the zoo's expansion: an additional land grab of four acres would only be allowed if the animals they housed could be visible from the rest of the park. Sadly, this sheer geological formation, erupting above the neat neoclassical terraces of north west London, has been barren since 1985, when Pipaluk, the last of the polar bears, was finally moved out after 18 years.

'Tigers are avid climbers,' explains Robin Fitzgerald, the zoo's project manager. 'They like to observe their terrain from a towering vantage point, so we've given them a habitat that lets them do exactly that – with a view out over Regent's Park.' Describing how the poles and canopy support each other, he adds: 'It's basically circus tent technology.' Neatly complying with the brief to all but vanish into thin air, this means there is no need for the extra steel structures that are so common in the zoo's other mesh enclosures – such as Cedric Price's famous Snowdon Aviary.

The former now provides a cosy den for the tigers, complete with heated rocks to soothe their weary muscles, while the latter has become an elevated area for visitors, with panoramic windows looking out across the Indonesian-inspired landscaping of the enclosure. From here, you can watch the tigers happily splashing about in their pool, or scaling the feeding poles to devour chicken wings and steak.

Such practical details are a far cry from many of the zoo's more famous structures, most of which were designed to maximise exotic spectacle. Founded in 1828 as the world's first scientific zoological gardens, the site has become burdened by the weight of its own history. From the start, when it was laid out by Decimus Burton, the zoo employed architects of the highest calibre – leaving it with a legacy of protected buildings.

Next door to the Tiger Territory are the bulbous flanks of the majestic elephant and rhinoceros pavilion, designed by Hugh Casson in 1965 to evoke a herd of elephants gathered around a watering hole, their huge rumps jostling for position. Topped with triangular roof lights intended to call to mind nodding heads and swinging trunks, the pavilion was commissioned 'to display these animals in the most dramatic way'.

The unavoidable strategy of make-do-and-mend renders London Zoo an inevitably dated institution, laden with rigid monuments conceived in another era that it must now either work with or around building design safari as a wildlife one. Victorian kiosks jostle uncomfortably with mock Tudor clocktowers; lichen-encrusted steel spaceframes cantilever out over brutalist concrete terraces.

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