DARWINEUM – a permanent exhibition at the Rostock Zoo
ATELIER BRÜCKNER wins European competition
Rostock Zoo is getting a DARWINEUM. The permanent exhibition that is due to open in 2012 illustrates the origins and evolution of life on our earth by way of live animals. ATELIER BRÜCKNER from Stuttgart has been commissioned to create the exhibition. The scenographers emerged as the winners in an invited competition. The architects were chosen in a separate selection procedure. ARGE Rasbach Architekten, INROS LACKNER AG and Ing.-Büro Jochen Döhler won the bid.
The plans are for a varied route, designed to be interactive and to illustrate geological and cultural evolutionary history to visitors, starting with Darwin’s theory of evolution. The core elements of the production here are the primordial cell and the stem cell.
The first section of the exhibition is concerned with the origins of life on our planet. Visitors set out on a journey through the different geological ages, which are fanned out as themed display cases around a central inner room. At the heart of the circular “library of life” is the primordial cell. Its significance as the origin of all living organisms is illustrated interactively at a media table.
In the adjacent tropical house the specification of individual species is presented, taking primates as an example. Tactile graphics depict the differences and common features of apes and Homo sapiens.
The circuit ends with an outlook of current research. A walk-in model of a stem cell invites visitors to act as researchers themselves. It is situated at the centre of a laboratory that has been staged using various media. Here visitors themselves can lay their hands on different gene codes. The risks and potential of their own actions are made clear as they can check the results of their operations right there on the monitor.
- DARWINEUM - Library of life. Rendering: ATELIER BRÜCKNER
- DARWINEUM - Laboratory. Rendering: ATELIER BRÜCKNER
Contact:
ATELIER BRÜCKNER GmbH
Media Relations
Claudia Luxbacher
tel +49 711 5000 77 126
fax +49 711 5000 77 22
presse(at)atelier-brueckner.com
Zoologischer Garten Rostock gGmbH
Nicolle Völcker
Heaad of marketing
tel +49 381 2082184
fax +49 381 2082185
n.voelcker@zoo-rostock.de
www.zoo-rostock.de