How Will Zoo Exhibit Design Benefit from Using More Research Findings?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, 

Thank you for providing a stimulating manuscript which explores a much ignored topic and which has direct relevance to the zoo community. 

Please note the following changes followed by two recommendations. 

 

Changes/comments: 

Very helpful Abstract.

Please add a brief description of the review paper and the rationale for it including the aims of the review. This will help the reader understand the relevance of the paper and the structure of it. Though this is indirectly indicated in lines 51-58, these needs to be a clear rationale for the review and a basic intro to zoo exhibit design.

Line 40 – should be back-of-house

Line 80 – ‘In our experience (J.C.) this often is not the case.’ This is a bold statement and it needs evidencing.

Line 86-87 – ‘When working with the 86 world’s most advanced zoos and aquariums this is largely true’. Can you add an example here to substantiate your claim?

Lines 90-93 – these claims need to be substantiated – like evidence of similarly poor design used for similar species across multiple zoos or multiple species within the same zoo. You can use anonymised pers comms here also given privacy and gdpr issues.

Line 107-108 – needs substantiating

Line 108-110 – excellent point!

Line 113 – ‘organisations’ rather than ‘organisms’

Line 136 – after ‘….unaddressed.’ can you include some examples? I think examples would really help the reader if the reader is a designer especially.

Line 157 – instead of ‘fully understood’ ‘well understood’ would be better – how can we know it is fully or not? Pedantic point but it has ramifications as fully suggests there is nothing more to know and no other research needed therefore.

Point 2.6. – this is such a good point!

 

Recommendations:

A general point, the authors refer to science particularly but there is much social science and humanities research applicable to zoo design – especially when visitor experience and expectations are considered. Would the authors consider expanding the focus to ‘research’, ‘academic investigation’ or alike – don’t limit the potential impact of your work to just scientific outputs, your work and zoo design is relevant to many academic disciplines.

Another general point, would you consider adding to the solutions in ‘better stakeholder intercommunication’ or similar heading, that is, architects should consult directly with zoo staff and academics forming a design consortium for each enclosure to ensure those who know about animals and visitors and those who know about design and H&S talk directly, multiple times. This should be a dynamic, cyclical process of multiple meetings allowing direct communication. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1.

From: Jon Coe. 21 May 2025

RE: Manuscript ID: jzbg-3641936

Type of manuscript: Review

Title: How will zoo exhibit design benefit from using more research findings?

Authors: Jon Charles Coe *, James Edward Brereton, Eduardo J. Fernandez

 

Authors. Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript so carefully and providing excellent feedback. We found the review helpful and have adjusted our manuscript accordingly.

Reviewer 1.

Dear Authors,

Thank you for providing a stimulating manuscript which explores a much ignored topic and which has direct relevance to the zoo community.

Please note the following changes followed by two recommendations.

Changes/comments:

Very helpful Abstract.

Reviewer 1. Please add a brief description of the review paper and the rationale for it including the aims of the review. This will help the reader understand the relevance of the paper and the structure of it. Though this is indirectly indicated in lines 51-58, these needs to be a clear rationale for the review and a basic intro to zoo exhibit design.

Authors. Excellent suggestion. Done as a new paragraph at beginning of introduction.

Reviewer 1. Line 40 – should be back-of-house

Authors. Done.

Reviewer 1. Line 80 – ‘In our experience (J.C.) this often is not the case.’ This is a bold statement, and it needs evidencing.

Authors. Section ending has been rewritten to support this assertion based upon J.C’s long experience.

Reviewer 1. Line 86-87 – ‘When working with the 86 (?) world’s most advanced zoos and aquariums this is largely true’. Can you add an example here to substantiate your claim?

Authors. Done.

Reviewer 1. Lines 90-93 – these claims need to be substantiated – like evidence of similarly poor design used for similar species across multiple zoos or multiple species within the same zoo. You can use anonymised pers comms here also given privacy and gdpr issues.

Authors. Done.

Reviewer 1. Line 107-108 – needs substantiating.

Authors.  This statement of opinion on the nature of “best practice” is based upon author’s (JC’s) 50+ years of professional experience challenging best practices of the day. For example, as co-author of the “landscape immersion” design style in 1976 [References 8 & 32] J.C. observed that well over a decade passed before this approach, first strongly opposed by prominent zoo directors, became identified as “best practice by WAZA.”  However, as this isn’t a main point of this paper, and could be an opinion piece on its own, we have changed wording by beginning with “In our opinion…”.

Reviewer 1. Line 108-110 – excellent point!

Authors. Thank you.

Reviewer 1. Line 113 – ‘organisations’ rather than ‘organisms’

Authors. We liked use of term ‘organisms’ suggesting a biological or social-ecological nature of these organizations but have made this change as requested.

Reviewer 1. Line 136 – after ‘….unaddressed.’ can you include some examples? I think examples would really help the reader if the reader is a designer especially.

Authors. Examples are listed in Table 3. Post occupancy findings of interest to designers. We have added Table 1. for suggest project brief contents and Table 2. studies pre-design and during design.

Reviewer 1. Line 157 – instead of ‘fully understood’ ‘well understood’ would be better – how can we know it is fully or not? Pedantic point but it has ramifications as fully suggests there is nothing more to know and no other research needed therefore.

Authors. Done

Reviewer 1. Point 2.6. – this is such a good point!

Authors. Several specific examples of project pre-design in situ field research have been added in response to Editor’s comments.

Reviewer 1. Recommendations:

Reviewer 1. A general point, the authors refer to science particularly but there is much social science and humanities research applicable to zoo design – especially when visitor experience and expectations are considered. Would the authors consider expanding the focus to ‘research’, ‘academic investigation’ or alike – don’t limit the potential impact of your work to just scientific outputs, your work and zoo design is relevant to many academic disciplines.

Authors. Good point. This term ‘academic investigation’ has been added to ‘scientific research’ several times.

Reviewer 1. Another general point, would you consider adding to the solutions in ‘better stakeholder intercommunication’ or similar heading, that is, architects should consult directly with zoo staff and academics forming a design consortium for each enclosure to ensure those who know about animals and visitors and those who know about design and H&S talk directly, multiple times. This should be a dynamic, cyclical process of multiple meetings allowing direct communication.

Authors. Heartily agree! Have added a new final section: ‘Integrate key stakeholders into the design team.’

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

See attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2.

From: Jon Coe. 21 May 2025

RE: Manuscript ID: jzbg-3641936

Type of manuscript: Review

Title: How will zoo exhibit design benefit from using more research findings?

Authors: Jon Charles Coe *, James Edward Brereton, Eduardo J. Fernandez

 

Authors. Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript so carefully and providing excellent feedback. We found the review helpful and have adjusted our manuscript accordingly.

Reviewer 2. Overall, I agree with the message this paper is trying to convey, that zoos ought to more directly implement research in the design process, and there are a number of tangible benefits from

implementing research into design. Its layout is effective, first defining the needed terms, like good zoo design and zoo designers, following with explanations of potential reasons that zoo

exhibit design research is not yet fully utilized in the design process. After going through these potential explanations, the authors effectively reframe the question into one that is much more

actionable (how will zoos benefit from using research findings in exhibit design). Finally, the manuscript provides different examples of how actively using research results in the design

process can benefits institutions, using different measures of success like animal welfare indicators and time and resource management. After addressing the below feedback, I think it

would be a valuable addition to the ongoing discussion on the use of science in zoo exhibit design.

Authors. Thank you.

 

Reviewer 2. Lines 61-64: As someone who reads a fair amount of literature in this field of research, I think

this is a fantastic definition of good design both succinct and detailed.

Authors. Thank you.

 

Reviewer 2. Line 82: Another potential answer to this question (Why don’t zoo and aquarium designers closely follow scientific publications) that wasn’t mentioned could be a simple one - pay walls. Perhaps zoo architects/designers would follow research more closely if the research were freely available?

Authors. Agreed.

 

Reviewer 2. Lines 126-127: This sentence makes it seem like post-occupancy studies are only useful to learn from mistakes, I feel as if there are a number of published POE’s that share data supporting successful aspects of exhibits, so the statement on lines 126-127 seems like a oversimplification of the output from a post-occupancy study.

Authors. Agreed. This paragraph has been repositioned to section 3.8 so that it follows sections on pre-design research, and design integrated with research. Wording has been changed to respond to this comment.

Reviewer 2. Line 127: “Few scientific papers…” implies there have been at least a handful of studies that have analyzed award winners. If so, it would be helpful to cite them as examples.

Authors. Agreed. Reference [42] is given as an example

Reviewer 2. Lines 128-129: “Never been scientifically evaluated…”, meaning that no one has ever tested whether landscape immersion is beneficial to animals? Guests? All stakeholders? While maybe not explicitly testing “landscape immersion”, I believe there are a number of studies that have collected data on the effects of naturalistic (I do agree with the authors’ earlier point about the variance in the definition of this word in published literature) exhibits:

o Davey, G. (2006). Relationships between exhibit naturalism, animal visibility and visitor interest in a Chinese Zoo. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 96(1-2), 93-102.

O Fabregas, M. C., Guillen-Salazar, F., & Garces-Narro, C. (2012). Do naturalistic enclosures provide suitable environments for zoo animals?. Zoo Biology, 31(3), 362-373.

o Lukas, K. E., & Ross, S. R. (2014). Naturalistic exhibits may be more effective than traditional exhibits at improving zoo-visitor attitudes toward African apes. Anthrozoös, 27(3), 435-455.

Authors. Thank you for taking the time to provide these useful sources which authors are familiar with. Our point in this paper is that the specific term ‘landscape immersion design,’ as identified and defined in reference [8, 27, 33] has very specific characteristics important to well informed zoo designers and apparently not familiar to many authors using the broad and unspecific terms “immersive” and “naturalistic.” When Grant Jones, together with David Hancocks, Dennis Paulson and this author (J.C.) coined the term “landscape Immersion in 1975 [33] and later published [2, 7,] it had the highly specific meaning of being perceptually transported to a realistically recreated time and place and there immersed in that landscape with no ‘out of character’ buildings or barriers visible to the public. Later, others began using the term “immersive” in the broader sense of being “fully engaged,” but without reference to natural habitat landscapes or the specifics of “landscape immersion.”  I have read reviews of enclosures characterized by researchers as “immersive” which clearly did not fit the original definitions and thus did not inform readers of the value if the original definition. We have attempted to clarify this text.

Reviewer 2. Lines 130-131; 136-137: I couldn’t agree more with both of these points.

Authors. Great!

Reviewer 2. Lines 131-134: While I agree that most studies on the efficacy of exhibit design tend to focus on a subset of stakeholders, your wording here makes it seem like these studies are then not useful. Are researchers/designers not capable of pulling together information from multiple papers/sources. If the expectation for an acceptable/useful post-occupancy study is to include an investigation into the effects of all stakeholders, that would seriously slow down the sharing of data. Institutions may only have the resources/manpower/department size to focus on the evaluation of certain aspects of the exhibit. Should they publish, they should absolutely acknowledge that there were other stakeholders that were affected, but it seems like it would be a mistake to discount any of these studies, especially when they are adding to the literature of zoo exhibit design.

Authors. Good points. Earlier we mentioned that project cost and time uncertainly were an inhibition to commissioning research initiatives.  We have added a line reflecting your important concern.  We have extended this area with Table 2. listing some research areas of interest to designers. Perhaps this is a wish list, but it may give some guidance to researchers and their clients planning such studies.

Reviewer 2. Lines 138-141: What evidence do you have of these zoo client fears beyond personal experience? Some of what you mention (specifically preparing post-occupancy evaluations) can be quite simple to prepare (depending on the complexity) with little no effect on budget or schedule.

Authors. Good question. Please refer to text beginning on line 66. As I (J.C.) began thinking about this paper I independently contacted four other international specialist zoo consultant friends with their own firms and with decades of experience in the USA, Europe and Asia about how often they sought and used published research finding in any of the many areas they deal with, and why they didn’t encourage their clients to support more research. While their responses were confidential, each gave similar responses which generally paralleled my own experience identifying the issues we have raised in the first section of this paper. Therefore, my only evidence is based upon the personal and professional experience of five of the most experienced “zoo architects” in this small and highly specialized field.

Regarding post-occupancy evaluations (POEs), my four colleagues said they have never seen such a study of their projects during their long careers. One said their clients were too rushed to get on with the next project. I have been more fortunate. Of the well over one hundred zoo design projects I have contributed to I know of seven POEs. Four were from work with Zoo Atlanta where then Director Dr. Terry Maple was a champion of empirical Design (note his book of the same name with Dr. Don Linburg). Two POEs were prepared for projects in which I advocated for this service (Louisville Zoo Islands Exhibit and Los Angelos Zoo Chimpanzee exhibit). One was with Philadelphia Zoo 360 planning and design supported by Dr. Andy Baker, but only partially completed and abandoned. All but one of these focused on animal welfare with little or no mention of visitor experiences related to the design. One very useful study at Zoo Atlanta monitored gorilla activity and concurrent visitor numbers at a visitor overlook. The Emery University researcher showed that at the time of day with the most visitors (1pm) zoo staff called the gorillas off exhibit for their meal. This timing was changed as a result this study.

We mention our experience that the great majority of international zoo design is done by local generalist architects, landscape architects or engineers with no previous experience in this field. In the many cases in which my firm was paired with a local generalist architect, they depended upon the client and our firm to provide the information they needed without any research initiative on their part. This suggests that most generalist design firms follow this approach.

Reviewer 2. In my experience, there is an unspoken “fear” of a study “providing” that something was designed incorrectly or the new exhibit wasn’t successful, as new exhibits tend to be outwardly very positive experiences that drive revenue and attendance – I’m not sure if the authors have had similar experiences. [This same point was raised by one of the colleagues I interviewed. I have not observed this myself.] But, as the overall point of this manuscript argues, if there were more published work on what is effective zoo exhibit design, new designs could be based on science and perhaps allay these “fears”.

Authors. We strongly agree.

Reviewer 2. Lines 149-150: I agree with the reframing of the question, as most key decision makers in zoos and aquariums tend to think this way.

Authors. Good

Reviewer 2. Lines 172-173: Are there any examples of this type of “bolt together” zoo exhibits? It seems a little unfair to suggest a strategy to future-proof any exhibt that hasn’t been successfully constructed at a large scale in a zoo or aquarium although I very well could be wrong and haven’t seen/read about any examples. Unless there are better established materials/methods for this than I realize, I wonder if designing/constructing this style of exhibit would actually be more expensive, since you would still have to ensure safety while giving yourself the ability to modify the exhibit?

Authors. We changed the text to refer to architectural structures and added reference [3] which covers this subject in detail including a description of the Dallas Zoo gorilla back-of-house as an excellent example.

Reviewer 2. Lines 177-178: Perhaps the risk aversion you mention here is another way of describing the “fear” I described earlier?

Authors. Yes, we used the term “risk aversion” to describe both clients who expressed a generalized fear of change itself, as well as those with more specific project concerns. I (J.C.) once was told by a prominent operations manager of a major global zoo “I don’t like change! Change causes problems!”

Reviewer 2. Line 184: What is success defined as here? The improved attendance and welfare outcomes you mention earlier? Do you have evidence or experience that your statement in lines 182-183 does

actually increase likelihood of success?

Authors. This line has been changed to be more self-evident: “When innovations are tested scientifically and found effective, rather than only spawned from current trends or opinions, their chance of success is likely increased.”

Reviewer 2. Line 192: You imply volume of accessible space is better than area, which I agree with. However, raw volume is not necessarily appropriate either, as only certain types of animals can actually access of the entirety of volume (birds, aquatic organisms). There have been a lot of recent efforts to calculate accurate values for usable surface area for arboreal animals, which would be the most appropriate measure for their natural history.

Authors. We did say volume of accessible space should be the measure rather than simply ground are. However, we have expanded this information following your suggestion.

Reviewer 2. Lines 205-216: I am confused by the point this section is trying to make. It is titled “better design briefs” but offers little direction on what a better design brief entails. I understand that this is a wide-ranging paper focusing exclusively on design brief quality, but it seems strange for the authors to say, “we have observed a wide range in the depth and quality of design briefs…” and then provide no direction or even an outline of what a quality brief should contain. This would seem to be a responsibility (designing the brief) of the zoo/aquarium client, but yet the section moves on to architects collecting preliminary data to give them a competitive edge? For a short paragraph, it seems to be trying to make a lot of different points

Authors. Good points. In most cases, the zoos are the experts providing the briefs for non-specialist architects (as mentioned above). As a good example, one recent client provided a ten-page Excell file on their internal platypus research findings.  However, in other cases for example, when the zoo design specialists have designed six other orangutan facilities considered best practice, the specialist zoo design firm are likely to prepare much of the brief in collaboration with the zoo client, often including a predesign benchmarking report. The subject of what goes into a good project brief would require an extensive paper in itself. However, we have added Table 1. as an outlined example.  My firm used to provide our zoo client with an “Animal Data Form” to fill out for each species, including natural history, individual animal history, size, strength, jumping ability/barrier requirements, special enrichments, etc. going on for ten or more pages. We will delete the sentence about architects doing research seeking a competitive edge.

Reviewer 2. Lines 224-226: How would you recommend balancing out designing for the individual needs and preferences of an animal or animals with “future proofing” an exhibit. It is widely accepted that welfare is an individual measure, but that individual or individuals will (likely) not be the only occupant in that exhibit’s lifespan. Constructing in individual needs or preferences can up the short-term success (in terms of animal welfare) but could increase the costs long-term (potentially retrofitting the exhibit, until methods for the “bolt-together” style exhibit are validated).

Authors. Another good question. Perhaps this subject is best discussed under “Improved facility design and future proofing.” We have responded there to encouraging designers of new or renovated facilities to build-in practical features usable by animals of all ages. This may be parallel to the philosophy of ‘universal design’ and ‘access for all’ considered in facilities for humans.

Reviewer 2. Lines 234-241: Is there a particular type of scientist you are advocating for in the design process? My immediate thought would have been more of a welfare/behavior scientist, but you reference who I assume to be more of a field ecologist, as opposed to someone zoo-based? Both types of scientists have value, but I am just trying to discern the point you are making.

Authors. We have clarified this by suggesting that both types are valuable to design development.

Reviewer 2. Lines 253-261: I don’t deny that a study of exhibit design winners would be interesting, but the logic used in this section again fails to acknowledge that many post-occupancy style studies do.  

 Authors. Yes, there are a few. J.C. has been a designer on fourteen zoo design projects awarded various AZA exhibit awards beginning in1981. Of these we know of four published having POE’s. Again, many of these POEs focused on special aspects giving a valuable partial view of successful components and strategies.

Reviewer 2. Lines 264-268: Integrating common vocabulary across the different “research silos: you mentioned (animal welfare, visitor experience, wayfinding, etc.) or integrating common vocabulary across zoo/aquarium research and architectural design research?

Authors. This section has been revised.