Tamed With a Smile - Dudley Zoo Lubetkin/Tecton Installation

Tamed With A Smile draws on the complex and layered history of the iconic Dudley Zoo concrete structures, designed by Berthold Lubetkin’s Tecton Group. The project presents a contemporary approache to ideas of documentation and preservation from the collaborative practice of over forty BA Art & Design, BA and MArch Architecture students from Birmingham City University.

The project takes on two forms through a publication and the installation of a temporary exhibition. The book presents strands of engagement in nine collaborative teams where students make imaginative and ambitious proposals for new structures to be built at the Zoo.

The exhibition forms around one of the two kiosks design by Tecton with the elliptical plan imitated by three concentric rings of scaffolding – a component normally associated with reconstruction or demolition. Extracts from the book have been carefully selected to be suspended along the structure, creating a visual connection between the academic research and the on site artefacts. The work that surrounds it represents individual student responses to an overarching theme of preservation.