Lone glass panel completes big blue wonder at Long Beach’s expanding Aquarium of the Pacific
A single panel of glass sat on the sidelines of the Aquarium of the Pacific’s high-profile construction project on Wednesday morning, Oct. 17. Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia, various other community officials, designers, architects and other influential folks filed in one-by-one to watch a simple construction task performed.
Glass installation doesn’t usually draw a crowd or inspire press conferences replete with speeches, hard-hat tours and refreshments. But this was no ordinary piece of glass.
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Soon, this blue-hued wedge would join a sea of other rectangles adorning the side of Pacific Visions, the $53 million expansion of the seaside attraction.
The expansion will add nearly 30,000 square feet of exhibit space, meeting areas and a massive “immersive” theater to the aquarium. That all comes later. The new wing at one of the nation’s most-visited aquariums won’t open to the public until Spring of 2019.
But the completion of the building’s wave-like structure, gleaming various shades of blue in the morning seaside sun, stoked excitement in a downtown that has already reinvented itself over the last decade with an unprecedented development boom.
“Long Beach has a new architectural icon,” said aquarium President and CEO Dr. Jerry Schubel. “This is already a city with a lot of distinctive structures. And this is going to be one of its crown jewels.”
Designers and architects marveled that the building turned out exactly as they’d imagined: A graceful, ocean-like structure that shines in various subtle tones as the eye moves along its edge. And the graceful ripples look different to the viewer, depending on the time of day or the atmospheric conditions or the light of the moment.
The mantra of the morning: “Come back later for a look. Come back tonight.”
That lone glass panel that took center stage is not the same stuff that hangs on your sliding patio doors. The high-tech laminated glass was dreamed up and developed and tested and tempered and, well, pioneered especially for this project. It is comprised of three layers, each crafted to work as one. The more than 800 panels work together in a concept called a “ventilated rainscreen.” Its goal: Mimic the visual aura of sunlight kissing the sea.
The layers:
- The structure’s innermost core is intended to reflect out;
- The center layer is tinted blue;
- And on the outside: acid-etched low-iron glass, adding depth and luminosity (and preventing direct reflections of nearby sky and objects).
All that glass hides a rigid, intricate frame of aluminum that comprises more than 17,000 square feet. It will be illuminated by a cutting-edge lighting scenario.
Designers laid out multiple goals for the building’s tone. Among them:
- Preventing the squint-inducing glare often present with mirrored buildings, unpleasant to the eye when struck by direct sun;
- Stemming any increase in temperatures nearby, which could impact the area’s climate;
- And preventing bird strikes by forbidding direct reflection of nearby trees and sky, which can confuse birds.
Inside the big blue bubble, workers scurried about. As a stuffed penguin mascot kept watch, crews plastered walls and ran wires and paused only briefly when waves of community leaders and TV crews passed through for a peak. The cavernous structure that will become the giant immersive theater took shape as the tour’s highlight.
The tour guides were especially proud to tell this structure’s story. They included Quyen Luong, project architect for Pacific Visions and Fahria Qader, director of Pacific Visions and its architecture. When folks asked questions, they didn’t get answers, they got mini-seminars.
Speakers put the emphasis on the stories that this new wing some day will tell.
“Live exhibits can only accomplish so much,” said Schubel. ” There are some things we just can transport here and put behind glass. There so many stories that this new technology can bring to us in such compelling and informative ways.”