Taking A Fresh Look at Underwater Life

Have you ever watched a cuttlefish launch a sneak attack on a tiny unsuspecting crab? In the Vancouver Aquarium's new Canaccord Capital Exploration Gallery you can watch this scene play out - over and over. AldrichPears Associates worked closely with Aquarium staff, exhibit fabricator Beauchesne & Co., AV consultant Accumen Engineering and lighting designer Doug Welch Associates to create this exciting new addition to Vancouver's world-class aquarium.

This new gallery is part of Aquaquest - the Marilyn Blusson Learning Centre, a $22-million expansion completed Fall 2006. The Learning Centre is dedicated to meeting the needs of the Aquarium's growing education programs. It includes the Exploration Gallery, classrooms, a wet lab, a theatre and a children's play area.

The Challenge

The goal of the Exploration Gallery is to get visitors to engage with new ways of viewing aquatic animals and to develop new ways of thinking about and understanding animals. As designers, we had to identify these new ways of seeing and incorporate them into interactive exhibits featuring fragile aquatic life. At the same time, we needed to provide visitors with the "wow" experience of encountering really cool aquatic animals and behaviours.

Design Strategies

Video Capture

Underwater cameras and live-capture magnifiers play a key role in this exhibit, they offer visitors a chance to see things that happen too fast, too slow or at too small a scale to observe. In the sea star tank, a camera captures 24 hours worth of footage. Using a spin browser - video-editing technology adapted for the public - visitors can control the speed of footage. By speeding up the captured video, visitors can watch sea stars "run" around the tank, climbing over anything in their path, be it rocks or moon snails. At other exhibits, visitors slow down footage of cuttlefish catching prey or zoom in on a barnacle's delicate feeding filaments in action.

Tank Design

To provide new views on animals and their behaviours, we also used tanks in non-standard ways. In many aquariums, a front view into a tank is the only option. In the Exploration Gallery, we designed three and four-sided tanks. Several tanks feature pop-up windows so that visitors can see underwater life from a fish's perspective.

Flexibility

An additional challenge was the need to design for flexibility. The Aquarium wanted to be able to change out species without a lot of fuss, so unlike many aquarium exhibits, the Exploration Gallery is not focused on a single geographic area. The need for flexibility also means that graphic labels are changeable.

Lighting Approach

Exhibit lighting is minimal and carefully positioned, allowing illuminated tanks and AV screens to stand out. We used fabric with projections to create and enhance the illuminated environment, defining exhibit groupings with glowing ceiling features. Graphics are high-contrast and carefully lit.

Conclusion

The end result is an atmospheric exhibit that encourages active looking and investigation. We used technology and physical design to provide visitors with tools that expand the scope of their observation.

It has been rewarding for us to work on a project in our own backyard, and to see up-close the benefits to visitors and locals alike.

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