Poor Dudley. An enthusiastic zoo planner invited Lubetkin to put some buildings up for them in the 1930s and the wretched zoo management is stuck with them forever more. A warning to all of us.
Poor Dudley. An enthusiastic zoo planner invited Lubetkin to put some buildings up for them in the 1930s and the wretched zoo management is stuck with them forever more. A warning to all of us.
Lucky Dudley! A zoo that has had more fallow periods than most, in a pretty unpromising area, with, over the years, some fairly dire management. the one thing that has given it an identity, which has meant that it was somewhere, was that beautiful and iconic architecture. Thank goodness it is protected, by law, so that it can never be ploughed away in the name of 'progress'!
That's the rub. Money that might go into improving the animal collection has to go into the upkeep of listed buildings.
If I seem more than usually jaundiced on the subject of Lubetkin, it's doubtless linked to having had to explain to my sceptical thirteen year old daughter why London Zoo had to keep, and in pristine condition, a penguin pool that was no longer deemed to be fit for the purpose of keeping penguins.......
Dudley applied for lottery funding for the animals - didn't get it.
Dudley applied for lottery funding for the buildings - got it.
Pretty clear that money wasn't ever going to the animals!
Yes, there will be long-term costs, but far better they went into culturally-significant buildings like the Tectons than into a more generic animal house in my book. And I can't help finding it amusing that no-one ever talks about the *massive castle* when they talk about obstructive buildings at Dudley!
It's all academic, because the Tecton buildings will have to stay there until the crack of doom. I freely confess that I have a prejudice against Lubetkin zoo architecture, inspired by spending more of my life than is healthy looking at his buildings at London and Whipsnade.
My point is only really that future generations may well be just as glad of every fragment of Tecton as we are of castles. And I really despair at how distinctive old buildings are seen as such a curse in the UK zoos (un?)lucky enough to have them, when continental zoos show such imagination in updating them. Some of that is due to being publically-funded, but much of it is, I am convinced, just down to mental approach.
Dudley's problem is rather that it is stuck in a time-warp. Doesn't matter how much they try to improve and upgrade things on what always seems to be a shoestring budget anyway, they are always still left with all these historic past constructions which pretty much dominate the site.
Due to this and perhaps coupled with the urban location, Dudley has always seemed a depressing place to me, ever since I first visited many years ago- it doesn't matter if its rain or shine. I can't imagine ever visiting there again now.
