molitor won the competition to curate and design the new permanent exhibition in the renovated predator house at Zoo Berlin.
The exhibition focuses on cats as specialised hunters, presenting facts about the particular physical features, senses and behaviour of cats in an engaging and entertaining way. Visitors gain a deeper understanding of the evolutionary adaptations these felines are equipped with and are made aware of the dangers that many cats face in the wild, the complexity of ecosystems, and nature conservation in general. The exhibition also helps convey that species conservation is a central task of modern zoos – something that has not been so explicitly communicated to visitors in the past. Finally, the exhibition encourages visitors to make a financial contribution to the Zoo’s various conservation breeding or in situ projects.

Zoo Berlin is in the process of modernising many of its habitats to bring them up to today’s animal-keeping standards. The new predator house, which has been renamed “Empire of Cats”, was one such project. The focus of the renovations was to create species-appropriate habitats that provide the inhabitants with more space and that more closely resemble their homes in the wild. The former sterile rows of cages with their thick bars have been replaced with spacious, natural-looking enclosures. And thanks to massive panes of glass four centimetres in thickness, visitors can now enjoy an unobstructed view and unprecedented close-up experiences of these mighty predators.

Photos: Benjamin Dahl, ©molitor GmbH