Ross Barney Architects

Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo

Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo

SEARLE VISITOR CENTER, LINCOLN PARK ZOO

Ross Barney Architects

BUDGET
$5M - 10M

AREA
5000 sqft - 10,000 sqft

YEAR
2019

LOCATION
Chicago, IL, United States

TYPE
Hospitality + Sport › Zoo/Aquarium

The Lincoln Park Zoo, one of North America’s oldest, has evolved since its 1868 founding into an institution that connects people with nature in the urban heart of Chicago.

Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo
Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo

Through its focus on quality and conservation, the Zoo embarked on a capital campaign to re-work its visitor experience including a dynamic east gate pavilion as the new Searle Visitor Center.

The new pavilion, which comprise an entry gate, visitor center, administrative offices, membership lounge, and public washrooms tucks behind the natural landscape.

Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo
Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo

Two buildings formed in the shape of a “J” are visually tied together by an innovative structural canopy with cantilevered frames supporting and hanging from one another.

These opposing forces: tension and compression, balance in an effect that appears to effortlessly levitate.

Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo
Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo

As visitors arrive, a pattern of layered branches filters light as if peering through the branches of a tree.

A courtyard, scattered with boulders and a blooming tree, is wrapped by offices.

Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo
Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo

The information center, with its retracting walls, opens to the Zoo grounds in the summer months, enriching the visitor experience and creating an open and welcoming experience.

As the Zoo closes, a monumental gate with the same layered branch pattern closes. Pivotal to the design and security of the building and more broadly the entire zoo campus, the pattern had to be calibrated to discourage climbing.

Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo
Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo
Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo

The Searle Visitor Center represents the aspirations of a Chicago Institution that has become one of the last free Zoo’s in the country with a memorable building that is a gateway to the park, city, and world beyond.

Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo
Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo


Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo
Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo


Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo


Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo
Searle Visitor Center, Lincoln Park Zoo

Ross Barney Architects
T +1 312 8320600
Ross Barney Architects
10 W Hubbard St, Chicago, IL 60654, United States