Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the traditional grid, to allow a range of opportunities for socialization or
privacy. The plan was influenced by Coe's experience in the favelas of
Brazil. Both projects won many awards and still had two-year waiting lists
for occupancy 10 years after opening. These projects were early examples
of what he has come to call “affiliative design”—design that encourages
positive interactions among people, among animals, or between people and
animals.
While at Lombard North, Coe also helped develop an environmental
analysis for a thousand-mile highway along Canada's Mackenzie River to
the Arctic Circle, and he is proud of the fact that the report helped to dis-
suade the government from building it. Coe had become an ardent and
aggressive conservationist. He helped lead a successful campaign to prevent
development of a massive commercial ski resort in Banff National Park, and
his comments at public hearings on the future of the Canadian Rocky
Mountains National Parks were published in the Canadian edition of
Time.
Coe's voice was being heard on a regional and on a national level. These
activities only increased his deep appreciation of the wilderness, yet he still
had not found an opportunity to test his theories or use his professional
skills in the design of wildlife parks or zoos.
By 1973, after 4 years in Alberta, Coe was ready to return to the United
States. He had kept in touch with a Harvard friend and classmate, Grant
Jones, who had his own firm in Seattle and wanted Coe to join him. The
firm, Jones & Jones, was developing an outstanding reputation for quality
and innovation in architecture and landscape design. Coe accepted the
offer. Two weeks after he joined Jones & Jones, they landed their first zoo
project: a master plan for Northwest Trek, a 600-acre wildlife reserve in
Eatonville,Washington.
In designing Northwest Trek, Coe and Jones drew on the expertise of
David Hancocks, a British zoo designer who was serving as a consultant to
Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo. The zoo had raised $60 million for renova-
tions, but had been forced to reject a problematic master plan developed by
another firm. Now Woodland Park Zoo approached Jones & Jones, asking
them to submit a new master plan, with Hancocks serving as the zoo's rep-
resentative.The noted ecologist Dennis Paulson would be scientific advisor.
An early draft of the master plan developed by this team so impressed the
Seattle City Council that it was immediately approved, and construction of
exhibits began before the master plan document was finished.
