Quarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian (seventeenth century Venetian) quarantena, meaning forty-day period. Quarantine can be applied to humans, but also to animals of various kinds.

In simple term the main function of quarantine shed is to keep animals under close observation for a certain period of time . The animals in this building might be sick or brought from other country.

Though there is no example of this kind of building in our country, after discussing with the client and researching other similar example of other countries we came up with certain functional areas for this building. Major functional areas are: cages, quarantine officer’s office, examination space, toilet, locker and electro-mechanical space.

The functional zones are separated very clearly here. While walking on the central corridor one will always get a courtyard. The animals in the cages always get natural views from inside.

The site was already selected by the Zoo Authority. There are lots of  trees surrounding the site. Also there is a lake on its South.

The buildings are detached in three parts with three courtyards, which came from our traditional detached type building concept. The wall of the surrounding areas(West side) was not so pleasing and so we decided not to place another  solid structure to avoid repetition and ensure permeability of the site. Thus we have eliminated one side wall. This slope type geometry, apparently taking the ground space to infinity.

For the safety of the animals and also for the visitors the surrounding wall was treated as screen wall, which allows nature to flow  inside and also saves the animals from people’s curiosity.

Respecting our climatic consideration, all the internal walls are directed towards North- South. This helps air flow in the interior part and shading the space from direct sun.

Though the budget of this project was limited, the materials of this building is not so polished and taken as their original from. The partition walls are built with machine made brick, and the structural elements are as cast concrete. The green roof with local grass acts as insulation to protect the interior space from direct heat gain.