Shinsekai Gate

Beneath the elevated expressway, the entrance to Tennoji Zoo from the Shinsekai side stretches out: instead of a tall portal, there is a long horizontal arch and a broad plaza. The plaza was designed for queues, meetings, and for the occasion when a lost child needs to be brought to a point that is clear to everyone. The stairs lead to a raised gallery between the museum and the zoo's two sections; people who bought tickets by Tennoji Station once also walked along it, but could reach the animals only through this gate. The entrance was placed on the route between Shinsekai's shopping streets and the museum so that visitor flow would reach the district's shops.

The current gate appeared because visitors to the old zoo were divided between the Central Gate and the South Gate, yet once inside they still found themselves in a space split into northern and southern sections. After the nineteen eighty-seven Tennoji exhibition, city officials responsible for the park decided to redesign the entire circulation layout. They wanted to bring the flow together at one point and connect the zoo's divided halves.

The municipal commission went to the architectural firm Tokuoka Sekkei. For the new entrance, they chose the line between Shinsekai's shopping streets and the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art. This explains the gate's name: it faces Shinsekai and was meant to bring its visitors straight to the zoo, and zoo visitors to the district's shops. The local merchants' revenue depended on the direction of visitor flow.

The Hanshin Expressway literally loomed over the designers: its elevated roadway crossed the approach in front of the gate. A tall ceremonial portal beneath it would have looked hemmed in, so the architects stretched the entrance horizontally and created a broad plaza in front of it. It was meant to accommodate a queue, serve as a meeting place, and give a lost child an obvious point to return to. The commission was tested every day by people's actions: all zoo visitors were to pass through this hub.

On February twenty-fourth, nineteen ninety, Shinsekai Gate opened, the South Gate closed, and the new entrance became the only one. The rule was followed literally. A person could buy a zoo ticket on the Tennoji Station side, but could not enter there: they were instructed to cross the park, walk along the connecting gallery past the museum, and present the ticket here. The same gallery made it easier to move between the zoo's northern and southern sections.

There are now two entrances again. However, the arch, the broad plaza beneath the elevated roadway, and the stairs to the raised passage remain from the layout under which a ticket could be bought at the other end of the park, but the animals could be reached only through Shinsekai Gate.