Alumas Wilde Designs let the North Carolina Zoo highlight

For someone with “interior” in her degree, Crista McGee '91 spends a lot of time outdoors.

Like her colleagues from the Department of Interior Architecture (IARC) from UnC Greensboro, she creates living spaces that concentrate on safety and comfort. But your customers need space to sharpen claws, pursue cocks or stretch tribes.

“How unique is it to design part of the design of animal rooms to which so many people come in North Carolina and beyond love?” she says.

These habitats are distributed in the North Carolina Zoo. McGee, who started as a student intern, is now monitoring the creation and maintenance of all exhibits as deputy director and chief facility management officer. She manages around 75 employees of planning and construction, exhibitions, horticulture and maintenance that are committed to ensuring that the animals and their human guests are equally satisfied with their stay.

A feeling of igniting

This first spark of interest in architecture began with McGee's mother, who collected design magazines and drove through the neighborhoods, only to look at the outside of houses. But McGee was more interested in what happened inside. “Because you have to live there,” she says. “If that doesn't work, the whole thing doesn't work.”

The Bachelor of Fine Arts in interior design was a perfect mix of convenience and academics. It was the only program of its kind within the UNC system and just a short trip from home.

“I learned things that were so new and unique,” she says. “To be able to build models. All of my professors – Tom Lambeth, the late Jerry Leimstoll and Joe Standley – were such great teachers, all very unique, each of them.”

She completed two internships: the zoo in Asheboro and a photo studio. One offered an air -conditioned office, while the other kept her in hot, humid summer. But her love for the mission of the zoo sealed her career choice. “I wanted this sense of purpose,” she says. “I wanted to do something that would take people to get a lot out or influence the lives of others.”

Learning stretched far beyond the classroom; She would also have to help build the exhibits. She registered for a welding course on the Randolph Community College. When she went into the store on her first day, the teacher thought that she was lost. “I was the first girl he had ever taught,” she says.

She never stops learning in the zoo. It can compare notes with other accredited zoos and aquariums. And at the moment the North Carolina Zoo is processed with CLR design, which was originally founded by John Coe. “He was basically the grandfather of the exhibition design for animals,” says McGee.

This contract culminates with new animals at the opening of a new continent. Next year, the NC Zoo Asia will open in addition to its current exhibitions on the continents of North America and Africa.

Room to grow

When designing these “interiors”, McGee always thinks about how to best catch the local habitats of animals. To stimulate her mind, she looks at “choice and control”; The animals can move in and out of their bedrooms during the day, and they add “furniture” to play games.

“We work with the zooeers to understand the behavior of the animals,” she explains. “Primates are a perfect example. You have to climb, so you have used many climbers to give the habitat complexity. We only added one tree to the Gorilla exhibition. I designed this on a paper napkind while I was on a trip with my daughter.”

The North Carolina Zoo stabs its size. Most zoos are located in cities and require smaller exhibits that are closer together. Meanwhile, Randolph County contains one of the highest percentages of the agricultural country in the state.

Nowhere is this size clearer than the Watani grasslands, 42 acres that McGee contributed to redesigning elephants, rhinos, antelopes and other African species. “It was really important and gave the elephants a lot more space because they roam so much,” she says.

The polar bear expansion was another important job. Their expansion added to the older Arctic water habitat with more tundra elements. She says: “The newcomer enables us to separate the animals for better posture and management. And now it has more natural substrate with grass and a stream. It looks more like their natural environment.”

Education and empathy through design

One of her favorite places was inspired by a book: “Last child in the forest: our children save our children from the nature deficit disorder.” She explains: “Think of children who cannot work without a phone in hand who have to be near an outlet to enclose. It is really important to bring children to play in a natural environment.”

She worked with the zoo's education team to create kidzone. There children can play in a stream that is ada-compliant for wheelchairs. You can hike over a tree wall, hide in a stone labyrinth and serve mud cake in the mud café.

Overall, they encourage “parallel game”. When they gave Gorillas a tree for climbing, they put a similar tree outside the exhibition for children. McGee says: “If you do such things, make empathy for the animal. Children pretend to be the animal and you can refer to it.”

And what is interior design without artistic flourishes? The zoo houses more than 150 works of art – some of Uncg -Alumni – along the hiking trails. Some are even interactive. The zoo also borrowed some works of art to Asheboros Bicentennial Park, library and the new Cone Health Zoo City Sportsplex, for which McGee had a place in the donation player.

At the beginning of her career, everything brings everything back to do something that leaves a lasting impression in her community. “If you create empathy for wild animals, you are rather inclined to take care of it. It is really this big, holistic package.”