Alfred-Brehm-Haus (Tierpark Berlin)

Tierpark Berlin-Friedrichsfelde, the East Berlin zoo, opened on 2 July 1955 in the presence of mayor Friedrich Ebert and GDR president Wilhelm Pieck; Heinrich Dathe took charge during its construction phase and remained director until 1990. Its large big cat house was planned and built from 1956 to 1963 under architect Heinz Graffunder, for the East Berlin Magistrat. The Berlin monuments database links Dathe to the design and also names architects Lothar Köhler, Helmut Haar and Klaus Pätzmann and engineers Günter Queck and Walter Eichhorn.

Opened on 30 June 1963, together with the park's cafeteria, the house is named after the zoologist Alfred Brehm. It was celebrated at the time as the largest and most modern animal house in the world, and with the cafeteria it settled the layout of the Tierpark for decades. Its outdoor enclosures were enlarged in 1996-1997.

From September 2011 the listed building received a new thermal envelope, a project led by Haas Architekten, which puts its cost at 10.4 million euros and its completion in 2015. A second conversion began on 29 May 2018 with a stated budget of about 6 million euros: closed until July 2020, the former big cat house reopened as a rainforest house devoted to Southeast Asia.

Seen from above, the building forms a triangle, or a Y, intended to suggest a predator stretching out two paws; its distinctive flat roof was kept during the 2018-2020 conversion. The whole covers 5,300 m². At its centre stands the tropical hall, with a floor area of 1,100 m² and a height of 16 metres, which the practice in charge of the retrofit lists among its glasshouse projects.

The two wings, the paws, contain large indoor rock enclosures, and two smaller outdoor rock enclosures flank them. Between the cat dens, display cases for tropical birds originally lined the whole route; the visitor corridors now hold terrariums. In the latest refit, the original tiled back wall was hidden behind a reversible cladding, so the landscape scenery could be renewed without destroying historic fabric. The 1963 decoration includes mosaics on animal distribution, a mural by Eduard-Gerhard Clauß depicting a sabre-toothed cat and a crocodile fountain by Gerhard Hurte, and several animal sculptures stand around the building.

The tropical hall combines planting with free-ranging animals: rubber trees, bamboo, coffee shrubs and palms shelter free-flying tropical birds and fruit bats. Wikipedia also reports that the hall keeps Europe's only Malay eagle-owl (Malaienuhu).

Since 2020 the house follows a geographical approach, grouping species that live together in the wild rather than showing animals in isolation. The two large rock enclosures, each enlarged to 1,000 m², hold Sumatran tigers and sun bears kept with binturongs; two Berlin-born sun bears returned there in 2022. Javan leopards use outdoor facilities. The former cat dens now serve as extra space for the enclosures, as quarantine and as winter quarters for pademelons and Goodfellow's tree kangaroos.

The house stands at the heart of Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, which at 160 hectares claims to be the largest landscape zoo in Europe and opened in 1955. The Y-shaped building is easy to spot thanks to its flat roof and the outdoor enclosures around it.

The route alternates between the central hall, the display cases and terrariums along the corridors and the two large tiger and bear enclosures, extended outdoors during the latest refit. Allow about an hour for the house itself, then continue on foot to other parts of this very extensive park and to the 1960s sculptures and mosaics that accompany the building.