Wilhelma Amazon House

The Wilhelma began as a project of King Wilhelm I of Württemberg, who from the 1840s had a group of Moorish-style pavilions and gardens laid out at Bad Cannstatt by the architect Karl Ludwig von Zanth; the site was inaugurated on 30 September 1846. Only in the early 1950s did the royal park become a zoological and botanical garden, driven by its director Albert Schöchle, who had been in charge since 1933.

The Amazon House belongs to the generation of major facilities built at the end of the twentieth century. Designed by the Stuttgart practice Auer Weber, the hall was completed in 1999 and formally opened in 2000. Its full name, the Albert-Schöchle-Amazonienhaus, honours the former director. Construction cost 18 million Deutschmarks, of which 7.9 million came from the Wilhelma's association of friends and patrons, the largest contribution it had made to any project.

About a decade after opening, the original glazing proved inadequate: it was no longer letting enough sunlight through for the plants. In 2009 all the façade and roof glazing was therefore replaced with an insulating glass that transmits more visible and ultraviolet light. The house has kept evolving with new animal arrivals since, such as the pygmy marmosets introduced in 2024.

Auer Weber designed the building in two clearly separate parts. Facing the park, a large arched glass shell forms a single-span hall about 66 metres long, 18 metres wide and 14 metres high. Along the busy Pragstraße, which borders the Wilhelma, a solid masonry spine holds the plant rooms and keepers' areas, shielding the glasshouse from traffic noise and keeping the machinery out of sight.

The steel-and-glass structure was built by the firm Roschmann of Gersthofen. The glazing fitted in 2009 combines low-iron panes with a low-emissivity coating, a 16-millimetre argon-filled cavity and a 10-millimetre outer pane; it lets through around 81 per cent of visible light and roughly 37 per cent of ultraviolet.

Inside, the temperature is held between 24 and 28°C all year round, with humidity close to 80 per cent. An air-handling system serves around 30,000 cubic metres of air, supported by high-pressure misting near the entrances and waterfalls, 48 supplementary lamps for dull days and a filtration plant that treats more than 100 cubic metres of water an hour.

The planting is modelled on the Floresta Nacional do Tapajós, a protected national forest in Brazil. The collection comprises about 130 species according to the zoo's current description. Useful Amazonian plants such as rubber, cacao, cassava, papaya and banana grow alongside the cannonball tree, the açaí palm and ant trees, while epiphytes cover the whole space.

Much of the fauna moves about without mesh or glass: free-flying birds (more than twenty species, including macaws and tanagers), lion tamarins, white-faced sakis, black howler monkeys, two-toed sloths and pygmy marmosets. A 100,000-litre pool holds arapaima and other fish, and the house is also home to caimans, green iguanas, tree frogs, turtles and bats.

The house stands on the edge of the historic park, on the Pragstraße side. The route begins in an entrance hall lined with information panels, then follows a jungle path covering more than 1,100 square metres, past a stream and two pools with waterfalls; a staircase leads down to a window onto the underwater world. The small primates reward a little patience, so half an hour inside is well spent. Outside the exit, a 1,000-square-metre Amazon-themed playground draws families, and the visit pairs naturally with the historic glasshouses and Moorish gardens elsewhere in the Wilhelma.