The city of Basel called for a competition for a new 13’000 m2 aquarium in a small plot of land in the city center. Like a child that piles up playing blocks, we compressed the design into a landscape of vertically stacked trays that resonate with the scale of the urban surrounding. Urbanistically, the aquarium retreats away from the city, offering a covered cantilevered public space that doubles as the museum reception. On the other side of the aquarium, towards the park, the trays step to give visitors a sequence of large outdoor terraces. To create a building envelope that resonated with the urban context, we placed the tanks of the species that live below the sea level underground, and we only rose above ground level the spaces for the species that needed direct sunlight. We designed the aquarium as a sequence of unique shape and size for visitors to discover and explore while they learn about the marine wildlife in an urban setting.
The Basel aquarium was designed while I was at EM2N Architekten in collaboration with Fabian Hörmann, Özgür Irban, Mathias Müller, Daniel Niggli, Tomoko Suzuki and Jorrit Verduin. Image production was done together with Luxigon. Tenji, Inc was our aquarium consultant. Our proposal for the Basel aquarium competition was awarded the 7th Prize. More information on the EM2N website. Check out other proposals for the competition here.