The National Aquarium in Baltimore has opened the National Aquarium Harbor Wetland, a 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the Inner Harbor’s original Chesapeake Bay tidal marsh habitat. Located between Piers 3 and 4 on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, the $14 million project features more than 32,000 native shrubs and marsh grasses.
With Ayers Saint Gross as the architect of record and Whiting-Turner as the construction contractor, the project is based on sustainable innovations developed by the Aquarium’s conservation and exhibit fabrication teams. At the project’s start about a decade ago, Studio Gang participated as the original concept architects.
“Harbor Wetland is the culmination of 12 years of research, innovation, and determination,” Aquarium president and CEO John Racanelli said in a press statement.
Ayers Saint Gross worked with the National Aquarium to design a sustainable, high-performing floating wetland intended to restore natural habitats and improve biodiversity and water quality. The project aims to reverse years of environmental degradation while creating a renewed, thriving ecosystem. The design features layered topography, with planting surfaces at tiered elevations to promote a variety of microhabitats and attract a greater diversity of species to the area.
![Photo: Philip Smith, National Aquarium](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Baltimore%E2%80%99s%20National%20Aquarium%20opens%2010%2C000-sf%20floating%20wetland%20that%20mimics%20the%20harbor%E2%80%99s%20original%20tidal%20marsh%20habitat_Completed-0007.jpg)
Free and open to the public, the constructed wetland serves as a floating classroom for the community. Interpretive signage allows guests to learn about the wetland, the species drawn to it, seasonal changes, and the surrounding harbor.
Featuring docks, walkways, and shade cover, the habitat is composed of recycled plastic matting planted with native tidal wetland shrubs and grasses, whose roots will grow down into the water. This provides microhabitats for native species while drawing nutrients and contaminants from the water. Coated with a UV protectant for durability, the matting is fixed to a system of air-regulated pontoons that allow for adjustable buoyancy of the wetland, offsetting weight gain from growing biomass.
Compressed air is pumped into the channel to circulate water through the wetland’s shallow channel. Bubbles from the compressed air release oxygen into the water—benefiting aquatic species and keeping water moving through the wetland as it would during tidal changes in a natural tidal marsh.
“We hear so much negative talk about Inner Harbor water quality, but there is life in this water and there always has been,” Jack Cover, the Aquarium’s general curator, said in the statement. “My hope is that when people see the life this wetland attracts, from tiny microorganisms to fishes, crabs, water birds, and even small mammals like muskrats and otters—all of which we’re already seeing here—they might reconsider our local waterways and perhaps even take better care of our natural surroundings.”
![Photo: Philip Smith, National Aquarium](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Baltimore%E2%80%99s%20National%20Aquarium%20opens%2010%2C000-sf%20floating%20wetland%20that%20mimics%20the%20harbor%E2%80%99s%20original%20tidal%20marsh%20habitat%20Exhibits_HW_Mural-0022.jpg)
![Baltimore’s National Aquarium opens 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the harbor’s original tidal marsh habitat. Photo: Philip Smith, National Aquarium](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Baltimore%E2%80%99s%20National%20Aquarium%20opens%2010%2C000-sf%20floating%20wetland%20that%20mimics%20the%20harbor%E2%80%99s%20original%20tidal%20marsh%20habitat_Completed-0003.jpg)
![Baltimore’s National Aquarium opens 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the harbor’s original tidal marsh habitat. Photo: Philip Smith, National Aquarium](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Baltimore%E2%80%99s%20National%20Aquarium%20opens%2010%2C000-sf%20floating%20wetland%20that%20mimics%20the%20harbor%E2%80%99s%20original%20tidal%20marsh%20habitat_Completed-0006.jpg)
![Baltimore’s National Aquarium opens 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the harbor’s original tidal marsh habitat. Photo: Philip Smith, National Aquarium](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Baltimore%E2%80%99s%20National%20Aquarium%20opens%2010%2C000-sf%20floating%20wetland%20that%20mimics%20the%20harbor%E2%80%99s%20original%20tidal%20marsh%20habitat_Completed-0007_0.jpg)
![Baltimore’s National Aquarium opens 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the harbor’s original tidal marsh habitat. Photo: Philip Smith, National Aquarium](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Baltimore%E2%80%99s%20National%20Aquarium%20opens%2010%2C000-sf%20floating%20wetland%20that%20mimics%20the%20harbor%E2%80%99s%20original%20tidal%20marsh%20habitat_Completed-0014.jpg)
![Baltimore’s National Aquarium opens 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the harbor’s original tidal marsh habitat. Photo: Philip Smith, National Aquarium](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Baltimore%E2%80%99s%20National%20Aquarium%20opens%2010%2C000-sf%20floating%20wetland%20that%20mimics%20the%20harbor%E2%80%99s%20original%20tidal%20marsh%20habitat-0001.jpg)
![Baltimore’s National Aquarium opens 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the harbor’s original tidal marsh habitat. Photo: Philip Smith, National Aquarium](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Baltimore%E2%80%99s%20National%20Aquarium%20opens%2010%2C000-sf%20floating%20wetland%20that%20mimics%20the%20harbor%E2%80%99s%20original%20tidal%20marsh%20habitat-0004.jpg)
![Baltimore’s National Aquarium opens 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the harbor’s original tidal marsh habitat. Photo: Philip Smith, National Aquarium](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Baltimore%E2%80%99s%20National%20Aquarium%20opens%2010%2C000-sf%20floating%20wetland%20that%20mimics%20the%20harbor%E2%80%99s%20original%20tidal%20marsh%20habitat-0008.jpg)
Related Stories
| Apr 30, 2013
Tips for designing with fire rated glass - AIA/CES course
Kate Steel of Steel Consulting Services offers tips and advice for choosing the correct code-compliant glazing product for every fire-rated application. This BD+C University class is worth 1.0 AIA LU/HSW.
| Apr 26, 2013
BIG tapped to design Europa City in suburban Paris
Danish architecture firm, BIG - led by Bjarke Ingels – has been announced as the winner of an international invited competition for the design of Europa City, a 800,000 square meter cultural, recreational and retail development in Triangle de Gonesse, France.
| Apr 26, 2013
Documentary shows 'starchitects' competing for museum project
"The Competition," a new documentary produced by Angel Borrego Cuberto of Madrid, focuses on the efforts of five 'starchitects' to capture the design contract for the new National Museum of Art of Andorra: a small country in the Pyrenees between Spain and France.
| Apr 24, 2013
Los Angeles may add cool roofs to its building code
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants cool roofs added to the city’s building code. He is also asking the Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to create incentives that make it financially attractive for homeowners to install cool roofs.
| Apr 23, 2013
Architects to MoMA: Don't destroy Williams/Tsien project
Richard Meier, Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, Hugh Hardy and Robert A.M. Stern are among the prominent architects who on Monday called for the Museum of Modern Art to reconsider its decision to demolish the former home of the American Folk Art Museum.
| Apr 19, 2013
Must see: Shell of gutted church on stilts, 40 feet off the ground
Construction crews are going to extremes to save the ornate brick façade of the Provo (Utah) Tabernacle temple, which was ravaged by a fire in December 2010.
| Apr 17, 2013
First look: Renzo Piano's glass-domed motion pictures museum
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last week released preliminary plans for its $300 million Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences museum in Los Angeles, designed by Renzo Piano and local architect Zoltan Pali.
| Apr 16, 2013
5 projects that profited from insulated metal panels
From an orchid-shaped visitor center to California’s largest public works project, each of these projects benefited from IMP technology.
| Apr 12, 2013
Nation's first 'food forest' planned in Seattle
Seattle's Beacon Food Forest project is transforming a seven-acre lot in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood into a self-sustaining, edible public park.