The St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station, a 120,000-sf, attraction built inside the footprint of a 500,000-sf 19th century iron umbrella train shed, has recently opened. The aquarium is the centerpiece of a $160 million family entertainment complex developed for Union Station by Lodging Hospitality Management.
Designed by PGAV Destinations, the two-story project features exhibits and aquatic environments for approximately 13,000 aquatic animals from the world’s rivers and oceans housed in 1.3 million gallons of water. The 250,000-gallon shark exhibit includes a large acrylic panel weighing nearly 14,000-pounds that needed to be placed inside the footprint of the exhibit prior to the concrete structure being completed. Additionally, nearly three miles of pipe was installed to service multiple complex life support systems, each representing a different ecosystem ranging from riverside to oceanside and freshwater to saltwater.
Because the train shed was designated a National Historic Landmark, it was necessary to protect and preserve the original columns, footings, foundation, and underground piping. During construction, McCarthy Building Companies leveraged advanced construction technologies to promote a model based approach to managing the project’s unique construction coordination challenges, such as: using 3D Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies to pre-coordinate all structure, building systems and theming elements prior to fabrication and installation; model-based field layout and subsurface utility location using robotic total stations; and reality capture with laser scanning of the entire Union Station structure to produce a 3D point cloud with 360-degree photography. In addition, augmented reality was used to compare the 3D models to field installation on site.
See Also: Henning Larsen designs all-timber neighborhood for Copenhagen
The completed St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station is expected to attract one million visitors per year and is operated and managed by ZoOceanarium.
Related Stories
| Nov 3, 2014
IIT names winners of inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize
Herzog & de Meuron's iconic 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage in Miami Beach, Fla., is one of two winners of the $50,000 architectural prize.
| Oct 29, 2014
Diller Scofidio + Renfro selected to design Olympic Museum in Colorado Springs
The museum is slated for an early 2018 completion, and will include a hall of fame, theater, retail space, and a 20,000-sf hall that will showcase the history of the Olympics and Paralympics.
| Oct 23, 2014
Prehistory museum's slanted roof mimics archaeological excavation [slideshow]
Mimicking the unearthing of archaeological sites, Henning Larsen Architects' recently opened Moesgaard Museum in Denmark has a planted roof that slopes upward out of the landscape.
| Oct 16, 2014
Perkins+Will white paper examines alternatives to flame retardant building materials
The white paper includes a list of 193 flame retardants, including 29 discovered in building and household products, 50 found in the indoor environment, and 33 in human blood, milk, and tissues.
| Oct 15, 2014
Harvard launches ‘design-centric’ center for green buildings and cities
The impetus behind Harvard's Center for Green Buildings and Cities is what the design school’s dean, Mohsen Mostafavi, describes as a “rapidly urbanizing global economy,” in which cities are building new structures “on a massive scale.”
| Oct 12, 2014
AIA 2030 commitment: Five years on, are we any closer to net-zero?
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the American Institute of Architects’ effort to have architecture firms voluntarily pledge net-zero energy design for all their buildings by 2030.
| Oct 10, 2014
A new memorial by Zaha Hadid in Cambodia departs from the expected
The project sees a departure from Hadid’s well-known use of concrete, fiberglass, and resin. Instead, the primary material will be timber, curved and symmetrical like the Angkor Wat and other Cambodian landmarks.
| Sep 25, 2014
Jean Nouvel unveils plans for National Art Museum of China
Of the design, Nouvel describes it as inspired by the simplicity of “a single brush stroke.”
| Sep 24, 2014
Architecture billings see continued strength, led by institutional sector
On the heels of recording its strongest pace of growth since 2007, there continues to be an increasing level of demand for design services signaled in the latest Architecture Billings Index.
| Sep 24, 2014
Frank Gehry's first building in Latin America will host grand opening on Oct. 2
Gehry's design for the Biomuseo, or Museum of Biodiversity, draws inspiration from the site's natural and cultural surroundings, including local Panamaian tin roofs.