Primate House, Basel Zoo (CH)
Primate House, Basel Zoo, Switzerland
The outdoor area of Basel Zoo’s new primate house offers a great environment for the animals and a fantastic viewing experience for visitors. Given the design of the landscape, with its mixture of ponds and trees, the Jakob Webnet and wire rope structure provides the chimpanzees, orang-utans, and gorillas with much more freedom to move and more space to explore, creating a light, interesting and airy habitat with a feeling of transparency.
The animal enclosure features a specially-designed, two-layer construction, with the inner net consisting of a fine mesh (that encloses the primates), while the outer net provides a support structure for climbing plants to grow. Extending up to 20 metres in height, the enclosure represents a visual high point around the zoo, with the plant-clad wall providing shade for the animals and mimicking their natural, tropical environment.
“The new sleeveless Webnet can withstand higher loads than nets with sleeves, allowing thinner rope material to be used and so further increasing the desired transparency of the material.”
Beat Kobel, Jakob AG, Project Manager Primate House Basel Zoo
Details
Inner net
Sleeveless Webnet, black-coated
Rope Ø 3 mm
Mesh size 80 mm
Area 4350 m² with 853,000 net nodes.
Outer net
Sleeveless Webnet, black-coated
Rope Ø 5 mm
Mesh size 140 mm
Area 3550 m² with 259,000 net nodes.
Guy ropes
Guy ropes Ø 14 to 36 mm
243 individual ropes with end connectors (total length 2400 m).
Architect
Peter Stiner, Studio Vulkan Landschaftsarchitektur
Net statics
Pfeifer ingenieure, Konstanz
Manufacturing and assembly
Jakob® Rope Systems
