Upgrade for Strasbourg Zoo but the well-being debate continues
Guillaume Aubry, Cyril Gauthier and Yves Pasq are the three founding partners of Freaks Architecture, which was entrusted with the mission of renovating the small zoo in Strasbourg.
“It’s an interesting command, because the end users will be both animals and humans”, specifies Cyril Gauthier.
The three architects have just celebrated the 11th anniversary of their company. They come from all over France. “Yves trained in Rennes, Guillaume in Lille and I in Montpellier, but we all met at the Ecole d’Architecture de La Villette in Paris. We have traveled a lot as part of our training. The others went to Japan, and I went to San Francisco, and after Yves and I were in Berlin and Guillaume went to China.
We started working together using the Freaks name on a few small projects in 2007, but we officially created Freaks in 2010 when we won the award. Albums of Young Architects and Landscapers (AJAP) price.
The team has just completed the construction and fitting out of the reception area of the Orangerie Zoo in Strasbourg. “We created a new building to house the reception, plus a shop and a classroom. The idea was to be able to see the outdoor spaces, and to give more space to the animals. The stables and barn were already there, and we decided to make the pens easy to move so that they could be modulated according to the seasons and the animals on the farm. We also wanted to preserve the wild storks that nest on the roof, and made sure not to disturb them during the work.
It’s part of an ongoing city hall commitment to relocate the alien species living in the park’s old-fashioned and severely overcrowded small zoo, which is increasingly criticized by animal rights groups. Jeanne Barseghian, the environmental party mayor, has made the issue a clear commitment and intends to keep its promise.
She insists that nature reserves and safari parks be found to take the 120 lynxes, monkeys, wallabies, exotic birds and other small animals from the mini-zoo. She wants to see the small concrete paddocks and paddocks demolished in order to create a children’s farm where children can learn about pets.
The educational farm will be free, while the old zoo was chargeable. There are also plans to create a center to treat injured or sick wild animals.
the town hall owns the premises, but the zoo is managed and the animals belong to an association that is not at all in agreement with the town hall.
For their part, they say that the zoo should be redeveloped but that the animals should stay where they are until the end of their life. They insist that there is no cruelty in keeping animals in such cramped conditions.
Although they have been asked to run the children’s farm and rescue center, they say it will never happen and have so far refused to give up a single animal.
the town hall insists that the animals be rehoused and gradually decreases the grant he gives to the zoo to pay for its maintenance. In 2019, the subsidy was € 270,000, in 2020 it was € 250,000 and it will continue to decrease.
the town hall says it is ready to finance the costs of transporting the animals to new homes, but that if the association insists on keeping them where they are, it will have to raise the money independently.
The horns are locked, but the renovation and construction of the children’s farm will continue.
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