From Elliot Bay and Puget Sound to Lake Washington, Duwamish Waterway, Green Lake and Lake Union, Seattle is shaped by water. Yet, the Pacific metropolis is also a city profoundly shaped by — and built around — cars. Through most of the last century, the auto-centric reality was seldom more glaringly apparent than on the Elliot Bay waterfront, where the sprawling Alaskan Way Viaduct effectively cut off downtown Seattle from its scenic western edge. Fortunately, things are changing. Over the last decade, the hulking elevated roadway has gradually been dismantled, revealing the waterfront’s latent civic potential. And on Pier 59, the recently completed Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion elegantly knits a sliver of the shore back into the urban fabric.

Designed by local designers LMN Architects in close collaboration with exhibition specialists Thinc Design and landscape architects Field Operations, the 4,645-square-metre hub is an unconventional hybrid of infrastructure and cultural programming. The new Ocean Pavilion integrates a welcoming expansion of the city’s longstanding aquarium — housed in an adjacent building — with an elevated public park that reaches across the street to meet downtown’s bustling Pike Place Market, inviting pedestrians to the waterfront.

Overlook Park crosses the street to meet Pike Place Market, while also creating a rooftop garden above the new Ocean Pavilion.

Dubbed Overlook Park, Field Operations’ new public space combines an elevated pedestrian bridge across the 30-metre-wide Elliot Way with a rooftop park that tops the Ocean Pavilion. Accented by pockets of greenery, the generously proportioned elevated public realm resolves into a broad stair — organized around an amphitheatre of seating designed to facilitate public programming — that meets the waterfront. Here, visitors are conveyed along the shore and into the belly of the aquarium.

There are surprises along the way. The seamless integration of civic space and cultural architecture is baked into the building’s design. At street level, the Ocean Pavilion’s cantilevered form further expands the public realm. It also reveals a striking glass floor, allowing pedestrians to look up into the heart of a vast Ocean habitat — all without the cost of entry. (Not for nothing, however, the stunning overhead view is strategically situated next to the main entrance, and is sure to convince more than a few passerby to spring for a ticket).

Facing Elliot Bay, the building is clad in handsome Alaskan cedar wood timbers, which are poised to develop a graceful patina as the facility ages. On the other side, meanwhile, a more pared down, infrastructural face meets the road, pairing the wonder of the elevated park and the whimsy of a cedar facade with a much more rationalized expression — albeit one elevated by intriguing public glimpses into complex back-of-house infrastructure of pumps, filters and seawater recycling systems. (In contrast to typically energy-intensive aquariums, the all-electric facility is also designed to reduce energy consumption via heat exchange technology.)

Inside, the Ocean Pavilion offers a substantial expansion of the Seattle Aquarium’s varied habitats. The two-storey structure is organized around a massive 500,000 gallon tank dubbed The Reef — and populated by some 120 species of fish and various aquatic invertebrates hailing from the Coral Triangle, one of the world’s most endangered marine ecosystems. A submerged coral reef, the Archipelago is a smaller dual-level habitat.

Both zones are paired with sinuous interior volumes and exhibition spaces, designed to facilitate immersive wall projections while conveying the tranquil vastness of Ocean habitats. Meanwhile, expansive windows overlooking Elliot Bay create a pleasantly light-filled atmosphere while also underscoring a more immediate connection to the vulnerable marine habitats that surround Seattle.

For the Seattle Aquarium, the Ocean Pavilion is a transformational addition. While the aquarium itself has averaged close to one million annual visitors in recent years, LMN Architects and Field Operations’ emphatically public indoor-outdoor program is expected to engage some 15 million people per year.

It champions the connections; between urbanity and nature, humans and marine habitat, Seattle and its life-giving waters.

1/4

2/4

3/4

4/4