Penguin Pool

The Zoological Society of London was founded in 1826 and by 1828 had established a zoological garden in Regent's Park. From its beginnings, the Society employed a series of notable architects to create its buildings: Decimus Burton designed many of the earliest structures, including the Llama and Camel House in 1828, the Ravens' Cage in the same year, and the Giraffe House in 1836; Anthony Salvin Jr. built the Aviary in 1863; Charles Brown Trollope undertook the Stork and Ostrich House in 1896, and Guy Dawber built the Reptile House in 1927. Until the early 20th century, the prevailing view of animal husbandry was that exotic animals would not survive in the colder, Northern European…

Lubetkin worked on the design of the pool with members of the Tecton Group and with his engineer, Ove Arup. The structure has an elliptical pool at its centre, with "cantilevered interlocking spiral ramps", seemingly without support, crossing the centre of the pool, a glass-fronted diving area, and an enclosure with nesting boxes at one end. A viewing gallery runs around the exterior. It is constructed of reinforced concrete The Victoria and Albert Museum, in its 2016 exhibition, Engineering the World: Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design, described the pool as proposing "a new direction for British architecture, [and] also one of the first to demonstrate the expressive and…