Toronto Zoo - The Giant Panda Exhibit

The Giant Pandas Er Shun and Da Mao came to the Toronto Zoo from China as part of a ten year loan agreement with China and was an incredible opportunity for The Design Foundation to create an immersive and educational exhibit. Our goal was to inspire visitors to learn more about these amazing animals and the challenges they face in the wild. We hope that through this exhibit, visitors would be drawn to the story of the pandas and feel empowered to take action to help preserve their habitat and ensure their survival.

For the Toronto Zoo, we developed three diverse and complex media experiences. A centerpiece media installation was titled "Connect the Habitats" and it enables visitors to understand the challenges that Pandas face for survival as they encounter environmental fragmentation. The media experience is a group interactive, featuring a large scale multi-user multi-touch wall where visitors are challenged to work together to link panda habitats in order for the panda populations to not only survive, but thrive. The message of the experience underscores that Pandas require human intervention to help build connected habitats. The media experience inspires visitors to think of environmental challenges and the opportunities to help this species thrive. The graphic user interface is inspired by traditional motifs of Chinese scroll paintings and iconography developed in way that is fresh, modern and fun. The interactive welcomes youngsters and adult audiences in collaborating to a dedicated purpose: learning how to help pandas thrive.

Other interactives include "Meet the Expert" that allows visitors to understand what their jobs entail, as it relates to the Giant Panda Exhibit. There is also a "Find the Panda" interactive, that allows visitors to understand what makes an ideal habitat for a panda, as they search various environments in the digital game.