Pandahuset, Köpenhamn

To accommodate Copenhagen Zoo’s new guests, the two panda bears Mao Sun and He Xing, the zoo is building a new habitat designed by BIG architects.

The focus has been to allow visitors to come close to the panda bears, but on the pandas’ own terms, and much effort has been put into resembling the pandas’ natural habitat.

The Yin and Yang shaped building is organically shaped and poses a real challenge to construct. The only barrier between the panda bears and the visitors are the curved glass facades constructed and delivered by SGS.

“Apart from being a challenging design from a geometric perspective we have also had to accommodate for such rare factors as dimensioning the façade for “panda-load” which has been a bit out of the box even for us at SGS.” Says Harris Kapsis, project leader for Pandahuset.