Grande Serre of the Parc zoologique de Paris (Vincennes Zoo)

The Vincennes zoo was inaugurated on 2 June 1934 by President Albert Lebrun. Its emblem, the 65-metre artificial Grand Rocher, housed water tanks, animal lodges, staircases and a lift billed as the fastest in Europe. Ageing facilities led to the closure of the park on 30 November 2008.

The site was then rebuilt in its entirety, which makes the Parc zoologique de Paris, according to the accounts devoted to it, the only zoo in the world to have been completely reconstructed. The works, lasting about two and a half years, cost 167 million euros: roughly 10 million from the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, 30 million from the State and 127 million from private partners under a public-private partnership with Bouygues Construction and the Caisse d'épargne, repaid over twenty-five years. Bernard Tschumi's firm (BTuA), together with Véronique Descharrières, designed the buildings, and Osty et associés the landscape. The Grande Serre, central to the Guyane-Madagascar biozone, belongs to this reconstruction; the park reopened on 12 April 2014 under the Muséum's management.

Wikipedia's article on the park gives the Grande Serre as 4,000 m² on plan and 16 m high; another source, however, describes a 25-metre-high glasshouse sheltering the Guyane and Madagascar biozones, and the two figures are not reconciled here. The house recreates a humid tropical-forest climate.

BTuA's overall design relies on screens of timber beams covering most of the park's new buildings, and on a double skin: the first meets the needs of the animals, the second conceals the various habitats and gives the pavilions amorphous shapes that dissolve into the landscape. The glasshouse follows this logic, set within a landscape drawn by Osty et associés. The historic Saint-Mandé entrance, the Grand Rocher, the vulture aviary and the primate islands were kept in the renovated park.

According to Wikipedia, the renovated park holds 171,000 plants of 870 species, of which 3,800 are in the structure of the Grande Serre; the article does not say which plants these are, nor does the text state which animal species live under the glass itself.

The Guyane-Madagascar biozone, where the glasshouse stands, brings together the fauna of these two tropical regions. On the Malagasy side, several lemurs are shown (ring-tailed, crowned and black-and-white ruffed), together with the fossa, chameleons, tortoises and assorted birds and reptiles of the island. The primate islands inherited from the old zoo also lie in this zone. The park's other biozones are Patagonia, Savane-Sahel and Europe.

The Grande Serre is visited from inside the Parc zoologique de Paris, on avenue Daumesnil in the 12th arrondissement, at the edge of the Bois de Vincennes. The route is organised in five biozones (Patagonia, Savane-Sahel, Europe, Guyane and Madagascar), and the glasshouse offers one of the most weather-sheltered stretches of it, so it suits a winter outing as well as a summer one.

Half a day should be allowed for the whole zoo, with the 65-metre Grand Rocher serving as a visual landmark. Within the same Bois de Vincennes, the Parc floral de Paris, which has a butterfly house, offers a natural extension to the day.