The Treetop Trail demonstrates the power of landscape-led design in shaping interpretation and experience—reimagining existing infrastructure as a didactic, immersive environment. Guided by the Zoo’s vision to connect people, animals, and nature, the Treetop Trail experiential framework shifts spatial perspective, immersing visitors within the forest canopy while revealing ecological processes, cultural narratives, and species-specific experiences. The landscape architect led a collaborative partnership with Zoo staff and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, weaving landscape, interpretation, wayfinding, and experience to cultivate meaningful relationships with nature and inspire conservation awareness and collective action.

Established in 1975, the Minnesota Zoo pioneered habitat-based animal exhibits within its 485-acres of forest, wetland, and prairie. A 1.25-mile elevated monorail once provided interpretive access across these ecologies, offering visitors an aerial understanding of the zoo’s diverse environments. Decommissioned in 2013, the structure remained, presenting an opportunity for it to be transformed into a framework for understanding the zoo in new ways.

The design team worked diligently on analyzing and determining the appropriate scale, weight, and materiality of the trail to maximize the structural performance of the existing infrastructure and cause the least amount of disturbance to the zoo grounds. This included designing a modular construction process, which required collaboration between the architect, engineers, landscape architect, and contractor. The devised construction method was to construct the trail in 20-foot sections off-site, crane them onto the existing monorail, and then push them on the rail to their final location. This prevented disruptive construction from occurring along most of the trail, minimized impact on the existing landscape of the zoo, and sped up the construction timeline significantly.

The Treetop Trail reimagines the former monorail as a fully accessible, elevated interpretive corridor. Reuse of the existing structure minimizes ecological disturbance and carbon footprint, while centering movement and sequence as primary tools of communication. From an elevated vantage point, visitors engage not only with eight animal exhibits, but also with native Minnesota flora and fauna and the often-hidden care and maintenance systems that support them. These new perspectives give agency back to the visitor and the trail itself becomes an interpretive scaffold that reveals layered ways of understanding the zoo.

The landscape team collaborated with Zoo staff to craft interpretive elements that translate ecological processes, cultural knowledge, and sensory experience into the trail design through five themes – science, wellness, resource, inspiration, and recreation. The interpretive strategy uses tactile materials, planting, furnishings, and custom railings to reinforce embodied learning and place-based narratives. This system extends into integrated wayfinding, ensuring the interpretive story is legible and navigable. Four new touchdown points connect the elevated trail to activated on-grade experiences. Numerous bump-outs along the trail create deliberate moments of pause and organize fourteen interpretive installations into a clear, coherent sequence. This new infrastructure also gives Zoo staff infinite new spaces to program throughout the seasons.

The northern segment of the Trail passes through 40 acres of Big Woods deciduous forest and wetlands, an undeveloped area home to a natural lake called Reflection Pond. Here, a bird blind envelops guests, offering screened views that encourage quiet observation without disturbance. At Bison Landing, storytelling and interpretation was cocreated with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. At this touchdown, visitors can hover above the bison habitat or descend a circular ramp, interpreting the critical relationships between bison, people, prairies, and pollinators. The exhibit culminates in an interactive bison sculpture at-grade.

Since opening in 2023, the Treetop Trail has increased Zoo visitation by approximately 66,000 visitors per month demonstrating the impact of landscape-led design, interpretation and wayfinding on audience engagement and advancing the zoo’s mission. The project’s SITES Silver certification makes it only the third Minnesota project to receive this recognition.

Credit List:
Minnesota Zoo (Client)
Buro Happold (Structural Engineering)
Meyer Borgman Johnson (MBJ) (Structural Engineering)
Victus Engineering (Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Plumbing)
Barr Engineering (Civil Engineering)
MIG (Zoo Exhibit Design)
SIG (SITES + Sustainability)
Braun Intertec (Geotechnical Engineering)
Summit Companies (Sustainability Consultant & SITES Certification Support)
Split Rock Studios (Interpretive Signage & Wayfinding)

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