Proposed Public Aquarium Is A Minimalistic Tour De Force

By Leonard Ho

Click through to see the images.

The South Pier at Gdynia (photo right) already has a public aquarium, which was built in 1971. The Gdynia Aquarium is a modest facility by modern standards housing only about 200 species of animals (for comparison’s sake, Steinhart Aquarium [California] houses more than 900 species). A great portion of the facility serves as a “sea museum” rather than live exhibits, while recent renovations added educational activities (e.g. laboratories and touch-tanks). The aquarium is popular destination for school children.

The real estate at the end of the pier is undeveloped (and reportedly under-visited) park space. Architect Milolai Adamus hopes to convert this “misused” space into the location of a new, contemporary public aquarium.

His concept features four stories of exhibits with only one story visible at ground level. The top story serves as an observation deck while three stories of live exhibits are located underground, some of which is below sea level.

The minimalistic square architecture may look simple, but a lot of careful thought went into its design. Adamus used the Golden Ratio and Fibonacci Sequence as inspiration for the floor plan as is shown in the top-down blueprint below. …read more

Read more here: Advanced Aquarist