Where City Meets Water
Long Island City Aquarium , New York City, NY
Terminal Design Studio, University of Oregon, 2017
This project is the Long Island City Aquarium designed for New York City. Located directly off the East River, it is designed to serve as a center for public education and entertainment. In addition to its main use as an aquarium and research center, the site layout provides park space along a new public greenway designed in conjunction with this project, as well as programmable spaces for retail and residential uses.
The main mission of the project is to educate the public on matters of wildlife and environment through visible and interactive displays of rehabilitative and sustainable practices, provide accessible park space that gathers people and offers beautiful views of the water’s edge and the Manhattan skyline, as well as to create engaging experiences for all who interact with the design.
An important piece of the design was to mark a separation between the site’s response to the urban fabric to one side, and its differing response to the estuary on the other.
To do this, the aquarium had to hold a presence on the skyline while also rooting itself in the city grid.
To accomplish this I placed the aquarium at the water’s edge, ensuring its place on the skyline. I used a pedestrian boulevard to separate the site and provide a bridge across the basin, and used paths and park space to form boulevards leading back to existing sidewalks and streets. Lining the urban edge of the site are retail and residential spaces that blend into the city grid and invite pedestrians into the site.
In order to cement this site as accessible public space, I chose to dedicate the entire ground level to public use. This includes the first floor of the aquarium itself.
Sustainability, water retention, and water filtration are very much at the forefront of this project. I designed a water retention and filtration system that collects stormwater, directs it through a series of bioswales, and into a large raingarden and retention pond in the eastern end of the basin.
Here it is retained, filtered, and either sent back into the aquarium for suitable uses, or released into the river. This process is visible to the public and serves as an educational tool.
The main building is laid out on a 30’ x 60’ grid of steel tube columns which support steel I-beams and girders. These hold up a 6” two-way flat plate precast reinforced concrete slab floor.
The facade is made up of two core materials; board formed concrete and translucent channel glass.
The board formed concrete is used for shear walls at the building’s base and core. The translucent channel glass made of u-shaped interlocking pieces with insulation between their planks, is used as a double skin facade enclosing all of the elevated exhibit spaces.
In the lobby and atrium spaces, large curtain walls and glass brick glazing illuminate the interior and create intriguing patterns of light.
To maintain accessibility of the site, the entire ground floor of the aquarium is open to the public. The exhibit spaces are elevated off of the ground. Visitors enter on the ground floor, travel up escalators to the top of the building where they are offered a breathtaking view of the river and Manhattan skyline. They then travel down as they walk through three floors of exhibits and around a large central tank that opens up to a two-story event space at the water’s edge.
Visitors are welcome to spill out of this event space onto the front edge of the site, where there is additional park space that offers yet another beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline.
