A sunny palace for cold-blooded killers is rising on the eastern edge of Grant Park.
Underneath a 45-foot-high glass dome, artisans are assembling environments for snakes, lizards, frogs and turtles, all of which will be part of Zoo Atlanta’s whimsically-named Scaly Slimy Spectacular: The Amphibian and Reptile Experience.
It is a new, $19 million reptile house, slated to open April 2. To be sure, not all the reptiles and amphibians sheltered there will be killers, though the roster will include some very dangerous characters, such as the eastern diamondback rattlesnake and the black mamba.
Another scary resident, and one of the stars of the show, will be a Cuban crocodile swimming in a 40-foot tank that can be viewed underwater.
But the dramatic structure itself, with its towering glass “curtain wall,” its artificial rivers and sculpted “rock” environments, may steal attention.
Construction on the project began almost two years ago. On a recent chilly morning Tim Fidler, senior director of facilities and construction, offered a hard-hat tour of the site.
Architecture
The approach to the new building brings visitors past a connected structure devoted to Georgia’s reptiles and amphibians. Along the gentle slope leading up to the dome will be an outdoor corral displaying the zoo’s huge Aldabra tortoises. An artificial waterfall will feed a river and pond featuring native creatures.
The 14,000-square-foot building, created by Torre Design Group Consortium, Ltd., is dominated by the irregular glass rotunda, a gem-like combination of flat and curved walls. Fidler pointed out the embossed “frit” pattern on the glass, a grid of translucent rectangles that filters the sunlight and keeps the interior from becoming a sauna in the summertime.
Inside is a manufactured environment in which mechanical structures are concealed within eye-catching disguises. Heating and cooling vents are wrapped inside artificial Puka trees. Two enormous cisterns are buried beneath the floor, and provide the interior and exterior irrigation.
An emphasis on water conservation, efficient heating and cooling systems and the use of local materials helped earn the building a silver LEED certification. “We’re working to get to gold,” said Fidler. “We’re about five points short.”
Exhibit design
Inside the dome a hard-hatted Stephanie Tommasella slapped handfuls of wet cement onto a “rock” wall, then used brushes and sculpture tools to shape the material into vines, roots and rocks. She is part of the team building exhibits for the animals — exhibits that look like works of art.
She and her teammates are creating sunken boats, desert rocks, fallen trees and dried river beds, using pigmented cement that appears soft and organic, but is actually rock-hard and pressure washable.
Exhibit designer Gregory George was a herpetologist before he was a fabricator. He tended Zoo Atlanta’s reptile collection in the 1980s, and then worked with reptiles and amphibians in Rhode Island and Tennessee. He started Gregory George Designs in 1998.
His advantage as a designer is a close knowledge of the creatures that he’s housing. He knows their natural environments, and how to duplicate them with the sculptural arts. He also knows how to keep them inside those environments. “I know what a milk snake can get out of,” said George: “A crack a third of an inch wide.”
(In 2010, a tiger rattlesnake escaped from an “unsecured cage door” at the zoo and was discovered on a neighbor’s porch. The neighbor clubbed it to death.)
George and his team reproduce those settings in various ways, sometimes making molds of rock outcroppings in far-flung locales, and casting those rock faces in cement. Under the dome is the team’s most impressive work, a maze of eroded rock spires modeled on the Chiricahua desert in New Mexico.
The authentic settings, which include African savanna, Amazon river, limestone cave, mangrove forest and Australian billabong, aren’t just for pretty backgrounds. They are intended to elicit natural behavior, and to show that the habitat is critical for the survival of the animal.
The animals
While the zoo has a collection of more than 450 reptiles and amphibians, a much smaller number — between 70 and 90 — will be displayed at the Scaly Slimy Spectacular at any given time.
The zoo will focus on animals that are part of conservation programs, said George, and will use fewer, larger displays to create a better sense of their surroundings.
Some of Zoo Atlanta’s reptiles, like the eastern diamondback, are familiar, and some, like the dwarf black-bellied salamander, have come to the attention of herpetologists only recently. This salamander, only found in North Georgia and parts of the neighboring Carolinas, was not identified as a new species until 2002.
Zoo Atlanta’s previous reptile house was opened in 1967 and is the oldest public structure in the park. It was a dark and slightly claustrophobic place, with hundreds of exhibits lined up in a parade of small terraria. Zoo CEO and president Raymond King says candidly, “that was a scary place.”
“This place won’t be scary,” he added. “Even if you don’t like reptiles, you’re going to want to come see this building.”
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