Schimpansenhaus (chimpanzee house with African tropical glasshouse), Magdeburg Zoo

Magdeburg Zoo opened on 21 July 1950 as the Magdeburger Tiergarten and covers about 16 hectares, according to German Wikipedia. According to ZooLex, the previous great-ape house no longer suited the animals because of construction defects and the lack of outdoor enclosures. Wikipedia mentions a great-ape house opened in 1994, ZooLex one opened in 2000. Work on the new hall began on 11 May 2013, at a cost of 3.1 million euros. Two lawsuits by a neighbour over missing noise protection then halted construction; to get around the stoppage, the project was converted into a tropical house without animals. In February 2014 a court lifted the halt, and in July 2014 a chimpanzee group from the Allwetterzoo in Münster moved into the completed hall, which opened on 17 July.

ZooLex adds that the neighbouring flamingo pond was integrated into the complex and that a new flamingo enclosure was built alongside. The electric slides and shatter-proof windows of the old ape house were reused, and its plants were dug up and replanted in the new building. The zoo states that its group of ten chimpanzees was merged in January 2019.

ZooLex describes a hall that resembles a greenhouse, with a transparent roof and partly transparent side walls. The glasshouse measures 910 m² (920 m² in the German version), with a flat-roofed extension of 192 m² housing four separation dens and the keepers' rooms. The concrete walls are painted in three graded greens, steel nets cover the animal rooms and the heating pipes under the roof are screened with wire. In ZooLex's photographs the facade is made of translucent panels with metal uprights beneath roof vents, and the interior shows a translucent roof on a steel frame.

Access is through an entrance lobby set at an angle of about 30° to the path, which keeps the heat in. The public watches the animals through several shatter-proof windows in a wood-clad concrete wall, shielded from reflections by wooden pergolas with brushwood roofs. The Magdeburg architects Robra Kriewitz Obenauff carried out the execution planning, with the vireo partnership of engineers and landscape architects.

The zoo announces a group of ten chimpanzees; ZooLex sets the capacity at fifteen and describes two indoor rooms of 361 and 129 m² with natural ground, dead trees, branches, baskets and ropes. The visitor area carries tropical vegetation meant to evoke the animals' habitat, with plants brought from the old ape house. In the animals' rooms part of the ground is grassed, but most is compacted; mid-sized palms failed, the chimpanzees stripping their leaves to line their nests.

Outside, three young catalpa trees, reeds and bulrushes edge the enclosures. The hall also houses dwarf crocodiles (Stumpfkrokodile) in a two-part pool with underwater viewing, and fish from the Congo basin. ZooLex publishes the Latin list of plants used; it is not reproduced here.

The hall stands on the zoo's route, after the Madagascar exhibit; the angled entrance lobby invites visitors in. The official site speaks of two levels, one at the forest floor, the other in the treetops. ZooLex describes a central room glazed on three sides, a raised platform reached by wooden stairs, with three windows, and a wooden bridge overlooking the pond and the stream that runs to the crocodiles. Outside, the winter enclosure is seen through three large windows, and a floating bridge crosses a pond with pelicans.

The zoo is open 365 days a year, with shorter hours in winter.