Wildlife Attraction
Design & Society Student Project 2011
Animal attraction has always garnered interest to crowds in the world. In countries such as Germany, Canada and France, zoos and marine parks have received more visitors than museums, theatres or other community places. People are certainly fascinated by wildlife, the World Zoo Organizations estimates that there are approximately 10,000 zoos worldwide.
Going to the zoo is a traditional and highly popular pastime activity in many societies. In 2010, Singapore Zoo welcomed more than 1.6 million visitors and Night Safari served more than 1.1 million visitors. Based on Singapore’s population in 2010, 32% people go to the zoo annually.
In animal sanctuary, people could observe and interact with wildlife comfortably. However, these preserves are places of forced meeting between animal and human. What is natural about a polar bear in Singapore or an orangutan in the middle of New York City? The major zoos only express and exhibit the exploitative relations humans have with animals.
From the design solution, which is ‘space’, I took out a result of a study, which suggests that if a human being naturally living in a small village of about 1 km and was confined in a space with the same spatial restrictions that wild mammals kept in captivity, this human would be living in a space of the size of a telephone box.
Based on the idea, I developed a series of poster which covers the same problem with different animals.
