New habitat and visitor experience for a colony of Humboldt penguins.

Kay Elliott Architects were commissioned to recreate the habitat of the South American Humboldt Penguins. Kay Elliott Architects designed a coastline with saltwater waves, beaches, cliffs, gulleys and plateau. The penguins fish from the beach and ascend to the inland plateau beyond the cliffs by the means of erosion gulleys in the cliffs where the penguins build nests and burrows.

The visitor is taken on a route around the beach and up inside the cliff to arrive at the nesting plateau, across the plateau nesting site to descend within the cliff to an exhibition space and thence to a spectacular curved underwater viewing window before exiting.