Aquarium Installs Final Glass on its New Architectural Centerpiece—Pacific Visions

October 17, 2018

LONG BEACH, CA– OCTOBER 17, 2018 — The Aquarium of the Pacific, one of the nation’s largest and most-visited aquariums, today celebrated a major construction milestone and ceremonially installed the final panel of exterior glass on its Pacific Visions wing. Pacific Visions is a 29,000-square-foot, two- story sustainable structure designed by the San Francisco-based architecture and design firm EHDD and scheduled to open in spring 2019. The San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy announced a $1.9 million grant in support of the project at this event. The event was attended by more than 100 people, including Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia, Councilmember Jeannine Pearce, and other city officials, Pacific Visions supporters, Aquarium board members, and other stakeholders.

The first major expansion project ever undertaken by the Aquarium, the $53 million Pacific Visions wing will be a new focal point of the institution, providing facilities that integrate the arts and sciences while offering visitors innovative ways to understand our connections to Earth, the World Ocean, and contemporary scientific research. Pacific Visions will further the institution’s role as a community gathering place where scientists, policymakers, and the public can celebrate the inhabitants and ecosystems of the Pacific Ocean and explore today’s most important environmental issues. The Aquarium is taking an unconventional path with its expansion project.

The Aquarium’s goal is to engage others in examining our relationship with our ocean planet, explore alternative pathways to the future, and discover how their collective actions will create the future. “With the new expansion, the Aquarium will continue its quest to meet this goal by being the aquarium of the future—a combination of museum, science center, art gallery, performing arts space, and a think tank to explore solutions to some of the world’s biggest environmental issues, said Dr. Jerry R. Schubel, Aquarium of the Pacific president & CEO. “The Rivers and Mountains Conservancy shares our vision of improving human connections to the natural environment and our use of natural resources. We are grateful for their support as we complete today’s construction milestone and grow closer to the Pacific Visions opening next year.”

“Over its 20-year history, the Aquarium of the Pacific has become a leader in the Long Beach community and beyond through its commitment to educating the public about the ocean and how we, as humans, impact our world,” commented Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia. “We are grateful to the Aquarium and Dr. Jerry Schubel for their continued partnership with the city on our Sustainable Cities Initiative and are happy to support the institution and the Pacific Visions expansion, which will continue to inspire people to work toward a better future for our planet.”

Pacific Visions is designed as a biomorphic structure that evokes the size, depth, variability, luminosity, and biological diversity of the Pacific Ocean. Complementing the Aquarium’s existing building, also designed by EHDD, Pacific Visions has a façade that strikingly responds throughout the day to changing light and climatic conditions with varying colors to mirror the effect of sunlight rippling on the ocean’s surface. The façade, which doubles as a ventilated rain screen, is made up of more than 800 colored, light diffusing glass panels covering an area of 18,000 square feet. The innermost layer incorporates a subtle reflective finish, the middle layer is tinted blue, and the outer layer is made of low-iron, acid-etched glass, which eliminates direct reflection of the trees and sky to reduce the incidence of bird strikes. Each panel is uniquely sized to accommodate the curves and angles of the building’s form. Working with EHDD, Buro Happold, and Clark Construction, the 839 glass panels were fabricated by Pulp Studio in Gardena, California, while the glass cladding system and secondary support steel was designed, fabricated, and installed by Woodbridge Glass and Sentech Architectural Systems. Installation of the panels began in July 2018. During today’s event, Pacific Visions’ Glazing contractor Woodbridge Glass lifted the final exterior panel by hand from boom lifts and secured it in place by hanging the carrier frame on 4 brackets attached to the secondary support steel and engaging a seismic clip.

The building will house a state-of-the-art immersive theater, expanded special exhibition and art galleries, and additional space for live animal exhibits. It will provide a revitalized front plaza and exhibition hall with space for installations, performances, and cultural events. Visitors will enter the new wing though the Pacific Visions art gallery featuring a range of changing installations to establish an emotional connection to the ocean and marine life. After passing through the art gallery, visitors will proceed into the orientation gallery, which will showcase a 26-foot- wide by 8- foot-tall media wall to introduce visitors to the challenges and promises of the future to be explored in the theater. The two-story, 300-seat Honda Pacific Visions Theater will include a 130-foot-wide by 32-foot-tall screen, curved in a 180-degree arc and a tilting 30-foot-diameter floor projection disc to immerse visitors in a virtual ocean environment. The infrastructure created for this theater will allow for media-rich performances, panel discussions, community meetings, and educational seminars that can incorporate live broadcast feeds and streaming media. A new expanded changing exhibit gallery will double the former changing exhibit gallery space where exhibits will be rotated periodically to reflect current scientific issues and discoveries and will be developed in conjunction with the theater experiences.

Theater content will be developed by the Aquarium and Cortina Productions in partnership with leading scientists, filmmakers, storytellers, and digital artists, to bring epic ocean stories to life that allow audiences to discover new species, witness the processes and phenomena of Earth’s ecosystems, and grapple with the many challenges facing us and the natural world. The art gallery will be designed to immerse the visitor in experiences that focus on the ocean’s ecosystems and marine life and how people have the power to shape our world in a sustainable and harmonious way through research and collective conservation efforts. When visitors leave the Aquarium, they will be able to remain connected and share the experience through the Pacific Visions app with friends and family.

The main Aquarium building remains operational throughout the construction phase of Pacific Visions. A small preview exhibition with a large-scale model of the biomorphic design and informational videos about Pacific Visions’ programmatic content is now on view to the public in the Aquarium’s Northern Landing. This includes an award-winning video. The Aquarium created the video in collaboration with Cortina Productions and won a 2017 MUSE Award from the American Alliance of Museums for the program titled Pacific Visions.

Support for Pacific Visions
Pacific Visions is supported by the City of Long Beach with a $15 million matching grant, a $5 million matching grant from John, Michelle, Mario, and Therese Molina, $5 million from American Honda Motor Co., Inc., and $1.9 million from the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy. Private donations and commitments of $1 million or more have been generously given by James and Marilyn Simons, Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg, Don Temple Family Charitable Foundation, Premier/SMG, and an anonymous donor. Additional support for Pacific Visions comes from foundations, corporations, individual donors and gifts made anonymously.

“The Rivers & Mountains Conservancy has been a supporter of the Aquarium since it first opened in 1998, and we are very pleased to be here in support of Pacific Visions and the educational opportunities that will be available in this expansion and beyond,” said Frank Colonna, RMC Board Chair. “It is critical, especially today with the threats of climate change and the drought that we’re currently facing, that Southern California has a place to learn about these issues. As the representative for the Board, I couldn’t be more proud of what the Aquarium has accomplished and look forward to what is yet to come.”

Members of the public can support this important project by making an online donation at aquariumofpacific.org/news/pacificvisions and on site while visiting the Aquarium. In support of its Pacific Visions expansion, the Aquarium recently created the Glass Guild, a giving opportunity for individuals, corporations, and foundations wishing to contribute to the project and commemorate their ties to the Aquarium. This group of supporters will ceremonially own one of the 839 panels of the Pacific Visions glass façade and will be recognized on a donor wall inside the new wing, on the Aquarium’s website, and in various publications, including the annual report.

About the Aquarium of the Pacific
The Aquarium of the Pacific Board of Directors adopted the institution’s Campus Master Plan in 2005. In 2008 the Aquarium opened its watershed exhibit, Premier classroom, and native garden, Our Watersheds: Pathway to the Pacific. In 2011 the Aquarium opened the Ocean Science Center, featuring the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Science on a Sphere® (SOS)—a 6-foot-diameter sphere representing Earth that displays animated images of the atmosphere, ocean, and continents using satellite and real-time system NOAA and NASA datasets for storytelling.

The nonprofit Aquarium of the Pacific is a community gathering place where diverse cultures and the arts are celebrated and where important challenges facing our planet are explored by scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders in search of sustainable solutions. The Aquarium is dedicated to conserving and building nature and nature’s services by building the interactions between and among peoples. Home to more than 11,000 animals, Aquarium exhibits include the new Tentacles and Ink and FROGS: Dazzling & Disappearing exhibits. Beyond its animal exhibits, the Aquarium offers educational programs for people of all ages, from hands-on activities to lectures by leading scientists. Field trips for schoolchildren are offered at a heavily discounted rate from $7 to $8.50 per student. The Aquarium has won a 2015 Travelers’ Choice Award for Aquariums, as awarded by TripAdvisor® travelers. The Aquarium offers memberships with unlimited FREE admission for 12 months, VIP Entrance, and other special benefits. The Aquarium won a 2015 Travelers’ Choice Award for Aquariums, as awarded by TripAdvisor® travelers, and the 2016 TripAdvisor® Certificate of Excellence. To learn more about Pacific Visions, visit aquariumofpacific.org.

About the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy
The San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (RMC) was established as an independent State agency within the California Resources Agency in 1999. The RMC’s mission is to preserve open space and habitat in order to provide for low-impact recreation and educational uses, wildlife habitat restoration and protection, and watershed improvements within their jurisdiction. RMC territory covers eastern Los Angeles County and western Orange County. This vast and varied area includes mountains, valleys, rivers, coastal plain, and coastline. The governing board is comprised of 13 voting and 7 non-voting members who are appointed or are designated by virtue of the office they hold: local, state and federal. The Conservancy has no power of condemnation or authority over city zoning laws.