Bird aviary, Rajgir Zoo Safari

Rajgir Zoo Safari in Bihar planned a walk-in aviary beside the Rajgir Animal Safari. Visitors walk inside the birds' habitat rather than look in from outside. The aviary covers 2,750 m² with an average height of 12 m, under a roof carried on steel arches, with HKS Designer & Consultant as the design consultant. Acier was responsible for the supply and installation of the complete rope and mesh system.

Covering 2,750 m² at this height means joining a very large area of mesh to a curved steel structure, and keeping it evenly tensioned over every arch. The mesh must hold the smallest birds in the collection while letting visitors see out to the landscape around them. The site is far from Mumbai, so material, tools and teams had to be planned well ahead of each visit. The design also changed several times after the mesh and ropes had been ordered, which meant replanning panels and fixings on site.

The mesh is Jakob Webnet in Ø1.5 mm stainless rope, in two mesh widths: W 30 mm and W 50 mm. Two sizes let the finer mesh go where it is needed, while the more open mesh saves weight and keeps the canopy lighter to look at elsewhere.

Along each arch and around the perimeter, stainless edge ropes carry the mesh, and the Webnet is laced to them. Lacing to edge ropes lets the flexible mesh follow the curve of each arch and span between them in tension, and it absorbed the design changes without remaking the panels. Acier supplied and installed the system as one package: 4,002.69 m² of Webnet in total, fixed, joined and tensioned on site over 10 to 16 weeks of work.

Visitors now walk through 2,750 m² of habitat, with birds around and above them under a canopy that averages 12 m in height. The aviary was completed in 2024. With 4,002.69 m² of Webnet, it shows how the system scales: the same stainless mesh used on smaller animal enclosures can cover a very large area when it is paired with a suitable primary structure.