Koala Circle: Two Linked Rehabilitation Yards Folded into a Walkable Timber Landscape

Most wildlife facilities announce themselves: a gate, a ticket hall, a fence line that tells everyone where the animals end and the public begins. Koala Circle refuses that script. Its architecture is a low, looping ribbon of timber that rises and falls with the ground, and at its highest point the roof simply becomes terrain again. You do not enter this building so much as drift across it, which is exactly the point. The project treats conservation architecture as part of the ecosystem rather than an object placed on top of it.

Designed by Shuyu Zhang, Xiaoxuan Hu and Linlan ZENG, the scheme was selected as an Editor's Choice entry in Haven 2020. The team frames the Koala Homeland as a hybrid of three programmes that rarely sit comfortably together: a natural habitat, a tourist interface and an emergency rescue centre. Rather than stacking these into a conventional zoo or clinic typology, they distribute them along a continuous loop shaped by the site's undulating topography.

A Gallery That Looks Out Rather Than In

The interior gallery shows the project's priorities with unusual clarity. Exposed timber beams set a steady rhythm overhead, while floor-to-ceiling glazing turns the entire long wall toward the grassy enclosure. Visitors move along a gentle ramp in soft daylight, so the act of walking becomes the act of watching. The architecture recedes into a frame; the koala yard is the real subject of the room.

This matters because the designers treat circulation as narrative, not plumbing. Visitor, staff and service routes are separated so they never overlap, which keeps the animals' side of the glass calm while the public still gets a close, sustained view. The glazing is the negotiated edge between those two worlds, and the timber structure keeps that edge warm rather than clinical.

A Roof You Can Walk Onto from the Hillside

From outside, the building almost disappears beneath its own path. A looping, timber-fenced ramp runs along the top, and a thin curved roof floats above the glazed walls, keeping the overall profile low against the sky. Because the roof meets the natural ground at its highest point, pedestrians can step onto it without ever registering a threshold. The perception of entering a building is replaced by a continuous landscape walk, with elevated views over the habitat and no direct interference with the animals below.

The tiered timber steps beside the curved path are the scheme's social moment. Here visitors sit and look across a grassy courtyard planted with trees, the koala enclosure laid out like a stage seen from a hillside. It is a modest gesture, but it gives people a reason to slow down, and slowing down is what turns a visit into an education. The material palette reinforces the agenda: locally sourced timber, including Broad-leaved Stringybark and eucalyptus-based products, lightweight aluminium roofing and fire-resistant eucalyptus plywood. Choosing timber over concrete and steel cuts transport impact and lets the structure act as a carbon sink.

Two Oval Rings, Two Stages of Recovery

The site plan exposes the diagram that drives everything else: two linked oval rings, each wrapped around its own courtyard, set among scattered trees and contour lines, with parking bays held at the edge. Each circular yard serves a different stage of koala rehabilitation, from training and recovery to longer-term habitation. Programme is threaded along the perimeters, so the building literally is the boundary, and the joined rings produce a single looped circulation system that organises movement while keeping humans and animals apart.

What makes this plan persuasive is how little it fights the land. The contours are not flattened to suit the geometry; the geometry bends to suit the contours. The yards read as interconnected ecological zones rather than isolated pens, and that layered hierarchy, from rescue to rehabilitation to public viewing, is legible in a single drawing. Animals get calm interior territory, and visitors get the outer loop and the roof.

Why This Project Matters

Koala Circle shows that a conservation building can earn its place by subtraction. Instead of a monument to rescue work, the team proposes a piece of shaped ground: low, timber-built, and organised around the animals' need for undisturbed space. The decision to merge roof and terrain is the move that ties it together, collapsing the distinction between visiting a facility and walking through a landscape.

There is also a quieter lesson about programme. Habitat, tourism and emergency care usually compete for the same footprint and end up compromising each other. By giving each its own route and placing them around two linked yards, the designers let these functions coexist without friction. For a competition entry, that is a mature piece of thinking, and a useful template for anyone designing at the uneasy edge where people meet wildlife.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Shuyu Zhang, Xiaoxuan Hu, Linlan ZENG

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Project credits: Koala by Shuyu Zhang, Xiaoxuan Hu, Linlan ZENG Haven 2020 (uni.xyz).