Snowdon Aviary London Zoo

Aviary at London Zoo, designed 1960–1 and erected 1962–5, opening in 1965. Designed by Lord Snowdon and Cedric Price, with Frank Newby of Felix Samuely and Partners as engineer and Margaret Maxwell and Peter Shepheard as landscape architects.

The structure is composed of aluminium and steel on concrete foundations. Four tubular aluminium tetrahedra are positioned in pairs at either end of the cage, with pairs of wider-gauge aluminium tubes interposed between them in another plane, acting as shear legs and anchored to the ground by two posts in compression heavy rocker bearings with deep concrete infill. This framework supports a web of steel cables in constant tension, covered by an all-over black mesh of anodised aluminium netting. A post-tensioned concrete bridge runs through the middle of the cage, cantilevered from the ends to form an angled walkway. The plastic-coated handrail functions as a bird perch and does not freeze in winter. The ground within the cage comprises ledges, terraces, and a substantial concrete retaining wall incorporating nesting boxes and feeding areas, which was necessitated by the unstable canal bank and does not provide major structural support. The maximum height is 80 feet, length 150 feet, and breadth 63 feet. Entry is via doors and hanging chains (originally aluminium beads to deter the birds) at ground level or via steps from canal level to either side.

The aviary was commissioned as part of an energetic expansion and modernisation of the zoo in the 1960s, undertaken under the presidency of the Duke of Edinburgh and financed by Jack Cotton, Charles Clore, and others. Hugh Casson prepared a master plan for the zoo with Peter Shepheard. Lord Snowdon, having already built an aviary, was commissioned by Solly Zuckermann in 1960 and partnered with Cedric Price, then newly in private practice.

This was Britain's first walk-through aviary and the first anywhere with architectural force. It was also the second-largest aviary in the world at the time of construction. The building represents the vigorous British strain of informal exhibition architecture that flourished in the 1950s and early 1960s, characterised by strong picturesque feeling and spurred by the Festival of Britain (1951), where Hugh Casson had commissioned a group of young designers. The association of Newby with Felix Samuely's Festival work was significant: Samuely's Skylon had been Britain's first tension structure (excepting bridges). The Snowdon Aviary was the first permanent tension building of its kind. Its all-over netting, geometry, and structural system suggest the influence of R Buckminster Fuller, whose design philosophy was greatly admired by Snowdon and Price. The designers adopted the tension structure because it was novel, refreshing, and exciting—no one in Britain had previously attempted such a structural mode on this scale. It enabled a light, see-through effect blurring the distinction between inside and outside, allowing greater freedom for both birds and spectators than previous aviaries.

The lightness contrasts with the heavier concrete shell parabolic structures fashionable at the time, whose form the aviary echoes while avoiding such materials. More significant is the contrast between the delicate, soaring, unimpeded shape of the Aviary and the weight of Casson and Conder's concrete, blank-walled Elephant and Rhino Pavilion nearby, designed at a time when zoo enclosures were expected to reflect the characters of their occupants. The aviary looked forward to the work of "High Tech" architects of the 1970s and 1980s, notably Richard Rogers. It forms an important part of the British engineering tradition, comparable to the palm house at Kew Gardens and Paxton's Victoria Regina house at Chatsworth. For Lord Snowdon, the aviary represents a breakthrough to a lighter tradition and embodies his belief in giving visitors an unobscured view of the birds in their shared space—a concept reflecting his vision as a photographer.