“Roev Ruchey”: More Closer to Nature

The “Roev Ruchey” city park of flora and fauna in Krasnoyarsk is the only zoo over the Urals housing giraffes, penguins, chimpanzees and other exotic species. Moreover, it is the first zoo established in Russia in the XXI century. It has been in existence for 16 years and along with the Municipal bridge it was added to the list of the Russian Federation cultural heritage to become one of the Krasnoyarsk symbols. Annually more than 600 thousand guests visit the zoo and in the nearest future there will be even more visitors when the project of “Roev Ruchey” expansion is implemented and its image is completely changed. 

The “Roev Ruchey” flora and fauna park is situated on the north-west spurs of the East Sayan Mountains where open-air cages for animals are placed on different levels so visitors constantly have to go up or down. This peculiarity and the park functions became the basis of the new concept that involves minimum interference with the natural landscape and provides perfect integration of entrance and arctic zones into the landscape.

“This is the present reality: we should improve living conditions for zoo inhabitants, increase the area of open-air cages, and make their environment as close to the natural one as possible”, says Andrey Gorban’, Director of the Krasnoyarsk “Roev Ruchey” park. “There is a special term – habitat improvement. That is why we intentionally create natural living conditions and imitate situations that are typical for the wild nature. We have set a target before the architects to use landscape potential to the full and preserve the unique character of the park. For this purpose Putorana Plateau motives were chosen for being a hardly-investigated powerful rock massif. I would like to remind that it is close to the geographical center of Russia on the bank of Lake Vivi. This predetermined the style chosen for future open-air cages.”

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Text by Olesya Kostuykova

Materials provided byDepartment of Architecture of Krasnoyarsk Administration