The old Atlanta Zoo was rated among the ten worst Zoo in the USA by Parade Magazine and the United States Humane Society. The city responded by hiring noted behavioural psychology professor and great ape expert Dr Terry Maple as the new director and dedicating the needed resources through an innovative “public-private partnership”, to completely renew both facilities and operations. Terry Maple’s book Professor at the Zoo (2016) tells this story in detail. Earlier, in 1982, Dr Maple had invited me to lecture his university class and during a spare period I sketched concepts for ideal zoo habitats for gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans based upon behavioural characteristics of each species discussed by Dr Maple. This collaboration resulted in the paper “Approaching Eden, a Behavioural Approach for Designing Great Ape Exhibits”  and Dr Maple used these aspirational ideas in several other papers as well. Thus, when appointed new director Dr Maple first hired my then partner Gary lee and myself with or firm CLRdesign to develop his master plan in 1984.

The zoo’s Silverback gorilla ”Willie B” was a popular Atlanta celebrity who had lived twenty-five years in the 6m by 12m room shown, never being outside. The photo on the right shows Willie B first entering his new green home. Dr Maple arranged to receive eleven additional gorillas from the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, challenging everyone to design the world’s best gorilla facility as the highlight of the master plan to establish Zo Atlanta as among the world’s best. As a result, twenty-two gorillas have been born in this facility and Zoo Atlanta has the world’s largest gorilla colony.

Attracted by to zoos popularity with young families, the Ford Motor Company offered to fund much of the new work as a marketing appeal to attract these families to their new Ford Taurus family car line. Thus, the first work, including gorillas, smaller primates and orangutans was named the Ford African Rainforest. Ford even helped sponsor a fact-finding safari of zoo staff, including me, to visit wild gorillas in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Cameroon, to study vegetation in their natural habitat to better recreate it in new Atlanta Gorilla habitats.

Photos of our group visiting mountain gorillas in Rwanda with the Zoo Atlanta team (left) and the final gotills exhibit at Zoo Atlanta (right). Dr Maple also lead the zoo team to Southeast Asia to study wild orangutans visiting a sanctuary in Sumatra and to explore Komodo Islands experiencing their giant “Dragon” monitor lizards. These destinations were all well off the tourist routes in the mid-nineteen-eighties. 

Lesson learned: do deep research into the natural foundations of the work and use each project as a university field course.

AZA Exhibit Award