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Located at the intersection of the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean, Mazatlan was known as Mexico’s “Pearl of the Pacific” in the 1950s when it was a favored destination for Hollywood stars. In recent years, attempts have been made to restore Mazatlan to its former glory. The city’s historic center has been carefully restored, and some of the medieval mansions dotted on the hills are once again hosting visitors attracted by the area’s cultural and natural wonders. The crown jewel of this comeback is the city’s magnificent new aquarium, one of the most anticipated new construction projects in Latin America. Designed by Tatiana Bilbao Studio, the building completely exceeds expectations and refuses to appear subtle or seductive. Instead, the new home of the Mazatlan Aquarium is a massive rationalist building made entirely of rose-colored concrete that looks like a stranded concrete stick. dune put.
This isn’t a bad thing. Over the course of many visits, the Brutalist structure bursts with life, both home to countless marine species and visited by countless families. Since opening last May, the aquarium’s massive walls have clearly served their purpose well, making a bold statement while letting the building’s content – the vast natural wealth and diversity of the Sea of Cortez – Become a star.
Gran Acuario de Mazatlán is the brainchild of local business magnate Ernesto Coppel, who led an ambitious plan to broaden his hometown’s appeal to tourists (so that they could stay an extra night or two at a hotel he owned, of course). Bilbao has taken on the task of revitalizing the city’s long-neglected and heavily polluted Central Park, a vast green area that runs parallel to the coastline. Then in 2017, her office secured a commission for the aquarium, which will be located on a 6-acre property at the south end of the park. The $100 million project is jointly funded by Koppell and the state government, with public land leased to privately run aquariums.
For its size and structure—186,000 square feet of total floor space and 74-foot-high walls—the new aquarium is strikingly isolated from the surrounding cityscape. It is closed on all sides. A busy road runs along the eastern edge of its enclosure, and its form is hidden from the south by various buildings, including the old aquarium building. It’s both visually and physically cut off from Mazatlan’s treasured beachfront west—a newly sanitized lagoon separates it from a row of high-rise buildings on the beach. Most puzzling is the lack of integration of the new aquarium into the northern park, especially given Bilbao’s involvement.
Once it does appear, the aquarium is a fascinating sight, mysterious, deeply unmodern, and very serious in its bunker-like volume. Although vertically staggered, 3-foot-wide concrete slabs define its elegance, it’s a wayward composition that defies easy classification or understanding. In fact, the most striking feature of the aquarium is not one of its facades—none of which is particularly clear—but its floor plan. Viewed from above, the building resembles a grid system, its intersecting walls forming a series of circular and rectangular rooms. Besides its powerful form, the building’s most indelible feature is the concrete’s lilac shade, which was part of the architect’s efforts to soften its strict rectilinearity and stark construction.
To enter the aquarium, visitors need to walk up a 112-foot-long ceremonial staircase (with a small elevator next to it).A slope leads up to the roof, which is filled with plants The walkway creates a pleasant (albeit unshaded) landscape, pierced by a large central cylinder. Visitors now need to walk up more stairs to access the courtyard at the base of the rotunda. Despite being surrounded by 44-foot-high curved walls, the Circus has a human dimension. It, with its café and fountain, is the first space one encounters in the building, and its grandeur makes it feel like home. .
If the prescribed approach seems capricious and convoluted – not to mention impractical for a building expected to attract thousands of visitors every day – it’s something Bilbao and her office like to cite ‘s complex narrative as the origin of its design.
Faced with having to design a huge building with a series of special requirements within a few weeks, the team came up with the idea of designing an abandoned building for an unknown purpose at an unspecified point in time. As the sea rose, the densely walled space was submerged, until one day its chambers reappeared filled with sea creatures that claimed the superstructure as their home. Entering the building from above is intended to immerse visitors in this mythical, pseudo-archaeological realm, while the imaginary inspiration is reinforced by the walls where water flows down from different points. It’s all a bit cliche and literal, but at the same time, the imaginative panache and the architect’s determination to carry this fantastical idea throughout is admirable.
The circular plaza extends into the vestibule, which features a spiral staircase that unfolds under an open oculus. This is where the real aquarium begins. The Bilbao studio conceived the promenade to be both effective and evocative, with the space transitioning easily from indoors to outdoors. Even the “indoor” rooms are actually only semi-enclosed, with no doors or windows, so the entire space feels like an open-air structure.
The exhibition is spread across 19 rooms, stretching from land to underwater canyons. Designed by Vancouver-based conservation organization Ocean Wise, the displays are enlightening but never condescending, and are designed to entertain and delight while educating visitors of all ages about the richness and wisdom contained in the ocean, as well as the human hazards Ocean way. Same treasure.
An aquarium wall of roses can never be too loud to remind users of their presence. The building becomes a monolithic skin with built-in recesses, corners, steps, benches, terraces and cenote-shaped light wells carved out of thick concrete to support mangroves or turtle basins.
This sequence constitutes the aquarium’s most dramatic display, taking place in two of its largest and darkest rooms. The first is a cylindrical floor-to-ceiling tank dedicated to housing the colorful coral life. Next comes the central part of the building, a hall that functions like a cinema, with the screen replaced by one side of a giant water tank filled with sharks and other sea creatures. (Like all of the aquarium’s thick acrylic panels, the 43-by-29-foot panorama was produced by Nippura Corporation of Kobe, Japan.)
After viewing the exhibition, visitors can descend the spiral staircase to the ground floor food court and other public gathering points. The aquarium’s offices are also located on this level, and the area houses the advanced filtration and life support technology needed to maintain and clean the tanks above. The third floor is reserved for researchers, biologists and veterinary staff.
In an interview at her Mexico City office, Bilbao explained how her designs must respond to natural conditions and convey permanence. “It needed to be a solid building, to suggest that it was there forever and would last for a long time. Our main goal was to create a building with an open flow between interior and exterior and to promote a natural relationship with the environment.” In fact. , the building needs to withstand extreme humidity, heat and hurricane weather characteristics. The solid materiality, weathered from the beginning, and the openness of the aquarium’s complex planning reveal that the artificial ecosystem is both at odds with nature and destined to be overtaken by it. Its exposed expanses are ready to be absorbed by time, vegetation, light and elements.
As for the building’s unexpectedly formal language, Bilbao claims it’s a direct result of the “submerged ruins” premise concocted by her studio: “We didn’t design it around a program, but rather as a group that opens and walls enclosing different spaces, there are no predetermined specifications to consider beyond the need to create an experience.”
Bilbao also acknowledged that the building’s reliance on concrete, a major source of carbon dioxide emissions, could be seen as contradicting the aquarium’s mission to raise awareness about taking better care of the planet. “[Based on] The way sustainability is measured now, I think it doesn’t make sense, it’s not a sustainable building. But you could also think of it as a structure that could last a thousand years and be inhabited in a variety of different ways in the future, so you could say that the durability and versatility offset the resources used to build it. “
On a recent weekend, the building’s shortcomings seemed meaningless given its success. Visitor numbers exceed expectations and visitors are always mesmerized by what they see. The building’s lack of overly refined details suits not only the climate and heavy traffic, but also the fact that this is not an art museum. Snacks are sold in some interstitial open spaces between exhibit areas, and visitors can interact with the animals with protective measures in place. As Rafael Lizárraga, the aquarium’s executive director, said during one of my visits: “Our raison d’être is to protect marine life. We are both a tourist attraction and an educational institution with a mission to support endangered species. special mission.” It will take time to assess whether Gran Acuario can achieve its lofty goals. Currently, Mazatlan has an impressive new landmark worthy of its storied past, made even more remarkable by its embodiment of Bilbao’s architectural imagination.
Suleman Anaya is a regular contributor to pin up, architectural reviewand aperture Lived in New York and Mexico City.
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