Seal Habitat at Rostock Zoo

On Behalf of	Zoo Rostock
Period	2025

Educative Exhibitions
Scenography
Design

Rostock Zoo has rebuilt its seal habitat – and we were part of it! We are developing several educative exhibitions, taking care of the scenography and are responsible for the habitat signage. We are focusing on interactive elements, consistency in the graphic elements and are also implementing games.

Real image of an interactive learning station with a red buzzer in the middle. The colour scheme is blue and it provides information on various topics related to seals.

New Seal Habitat

Task and Approach

The newly built seal habitat at Rostock Zoo now offers seals and South African sea lions spacious water and land areas. We were asked to design educative exhibitions, the scenography of the graphic elements and the habitat signage.

Image of an information board about seals.

Learning station on ‘The sensory world of seals’. Interactive elements such as a turntable can be seen.

Learning station on ‘Dangers to seals’. A seal can be seen in the middle of the board. At the bottom, outlines of plastic waste can be seen. Next to it is an overview of how many years it takes for different types of waste to decompose.

Simplicity and Interactivity

Our Approach

We develop a total of four educative exhibitions at the facility on the main topics of ‘The Sensory World of Seals’, ‘Masters of Diving’, ‘Two dissimilar Relatives’ and ‘Dangers to Seals’. Here, we focus primarily on interactivity, playful learning and visitor engagement. In addition, we design a one-metre-high metal globe that illustrates the distribution areas of seven seal species. Fold-out information signs provide information about the individual species. For the habitat signage, we develope both species and focus signs with questions that invite interactive animal observation. We also create a stele that clearly displays the animals' sponsors. We offer the Rostock Zoo the complete package: we are developing the content for the individual exhibitions and elements in collaboration with the zoo's zoologists, writing the texts and taking care of all the graphics, as well as the structural implementation and coordination of all the trades involved.

View through a small peephole into an underwater world. Below it reads, ‘Seals see everything underwater clearly and brightly – thanks to the tapetum lucidum!’

Close-up of the turntable at a learning station. By turning the disc, visitors can feel where the prey is.

Image of the habitat signage in front of a diving pool. Three seals are presented.

Learning station on ‘unequal relatives’. Fold-out signs can be seen.

Close-up of the learning station ‘unequal relatives’. A flap is lifted up, revealing a listening station underneath.

Close-up of the learning station ‘unequal relatives’. A hand presses a button next to the word ‘steering’.

Organic Material and Metal

Our Implementation

Our design is based on the overall look and corporate design of the zoo. For example, the educative exhibitions are made of a mixture of wood and metal. We also design five life-size seal silhouettes made of corten steel. These will be placed in the green area as artistic scenographic elements, where they will rust due to the sea climate and take on a reddish hue. We attach the habitat signage to artificial rocks. We also build support structures on ground poles so that the signs are slightly inclined and therefore easy to read. In addition, we develop a photo point with a seal, where the rules of conduct on the beach are automatically photographed. This draws more attention to the topic. Each educative exhibition contains at least one interactive, sensory element. These are both haptic and acoustic, for example in the form of listening stations. We also develope games to convey knowledge about seals in a vivid way.

Close-up of the fold-out information boards about the different seal species.

Photo of the fold-out information boards showing different species of seals.

Photo of the globe with fold-out information panels around it.

Photo of a life-size steel silhouette of a seal.

Tight Schedule

Challenges

A special feature of this project was the time frame for implementation. There were a good five months between the start and completion of the elements. Since the entire habitat was newly built, we had to coordinate with all the construction trades. Overall, we learned a lot from the project.