Neuwied Zoo Seal Enclosure

On Behalf of	Zoo Neuwied
Period	2025 - 2026

Educational exhibit
Scenography
Gamedesign
Prototype development

We are designing several educational exhibits for the Neuwied Zoo Friends’ Association, both inside and outside the seal enclosure. We are also developing two digital educational games.

A real-life view of two educational exhibits in the new seal enclosure. On the right-hand side of the picture is a large educational exhibit in the room with the heading ‘Adapted from head to fin’. In front of the board, a desk with a screen can be seen. Two further light blue boards are mounted in front of the blue wall in the background. The one on the left says ‘Menu of the underwater hunters’ and several round display cases are recessed into the board.

New
enclosure!

Task and approach

The support association of Neuwied Zoo has asked us to help design the new seal enclosure. To this end, we are developing several educational exhibits inside and outside the enclosure, as well as two digital games designed to impart knowledge to visitors in an interactive way.

A glass display case set into an information board shows the bones of a seal’s forelimbs. To the right of it is an illustration of a seal.

Several round display cases are set into the information board on the left. A model of a fish can be seen in the top one. A media station is visible in the background. A screen is set into it, above which is written ‘On your fins, get set, go!’. A control lever can be seen in front of the screen.

A close-up of a blue, wavy information board. The headline says ‘Why can seals stay underwater for so long?’. To the right of this, photos of individual seals can be seen.

Dive
in!

Our creative implementation

The basic idea behind the scenography is to allow visitors to dive into the underwater world of the seals themselves. Accordingly, the scenographic design is strongly centred on the underwater theme, which serves as a guiding concept. We are developing various educational exhibits on the topics of anatomy, diet, hunting, vision, diving, locomotion, individual seals and size comparisons. In the implementation, we are ensuring the interactivity of the individual exhibits and further developing the underwater theme.

On the left, the information panel entitled ‘The Underwater Hunters’ Diet’ can be seen again. Here, you can see that the panel features a total of six display cases, each containing a model of a fish. To the right of this, in a corner, is the media station with the game ‘Don’t Catch Any Rubbish!’. The entire room is painted dark blue, whilst the information panels are light blue and feature illustrations of underwater plants.

The educational exhibit ‘How do seals actually see?’ can be seen. To the right, a large round wooden panel is attached to the information board; it can be rotated to show how seals and humans see either above or below the water.

Close-up of the rotating round wooden panel.

Close-up of the ‘Dr. X.plorer’ media station. To the left of the recessed screen, a large image of a seal can be seen.

Learning
through play

Entwicklung und Umsetzung

In addition to the educational exhibits, we are developing two digital games. In the game “Dr. X.plorer”, players can literally look beneath a seal’s skin and learn about its bones, organs and layers of skin. The game “Don’t Catch Rubbish!” focuses on seals’ hunting and feeding habits. Visitors take on the role of the seal and swim through the water in search of food. But be careful! There is also rubbish floating in the sea. If the seal eats too much of it, it dies and the game is over. This allows even the youngest visitors to learn about seals in an entertaining way, whilst the issue of ocean pollution is communicated in an accessible way.