Distortions: Material, Optical, and Formal

The zoo pavilion is frequently constructed as a spectacle in which users pass from building to building looking down upon each animal in their fantastically replicated "habitats." This pavilion inverts and distorts these hierarchical relationships, putting the users on an interior stage where they can view amplified moments of the unrestricted loon via over-scaled optical lenses.

The project evolved from material studies and manipulations of a hollow steel tube, further deformed following the addition of bird as a driver. The common loon is an expert diver, visible in the muscular and skeletal deformations their bodies undergo throughout the process, a trait that was given form throughout each phase of the design.