Transforming a defunct monorail into an elevated trail was an exercise in creative friction.
By Timothy A. Schuler
TEN x TEN?s vision for the trail treats the former monorail as part of the cultural landscape. Photo by Corey Gaffer Photography LLC.
For some designers, a zoo may not have the same appeal or design potential as, say, a postindustrial site. But for the Minneapolis-based designers at TEN x TEN Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, a project to repurpose a former monorail at the Minnesota Zoo as a 1.25-mile-long elevated walking path was as rich as any historic site.
?We really saw this as a cultural landscape. We found these logs that the monorail drivers would post. We were getting into monorail design. Those are the kinds of things that we get obsessive about,? says Ross Altheimer, ASLA, a founding principal at TEN x TEN, which collaborated with Minneapolis-based Snow Kreilich Architects on the project. Situated 20 miles south of Minneapolis in Apple Valley, the Minnesota Zoo has a landscape pedigree. Opened in 1978, the zoo was designed by Roger Bond Martin, a founder of the University of Minnesota?s landscape architecture program. With 500 acres of naturalistic environments and the elevated monorail, Minnesota?s ?zoological gardens? were a departure from more conventional zoo design at the time. ?They wanted the animals to be in a natural setting, and so the scale of this thing is huge,? Altheimer says.
A section illustrates how the access points meet the gro...