Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion

This project was named an Award winner in the 70th Annual Progressive Architecture Awards, and was featured in the March 2023 issue of ARCHITECT.

“It’s quite beautiful. It’s hard to imagine [the project] not being there on that site. It feels like it belongs.” —Juror Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA

At 50,000 square feet, the plan for Seattle’s new Aquarium Ocean Pavilion is not particularly large, but the designers at locally based LMN Architects have leveraged the scheme to gracefully interlace the city’s downtown with its waterfront, all while striving to achieve Living Building Challenge Energy Petal Certification.

Developed to extend the Seattle Aquarium campus beyond its current structures on Piers 59 and 60, the solution—which relies on a series of ramps, stairs, and bridges—spans nearby highway SR-99. This dynamic network will connect the waterfront promenade, a verdant public roof garden, and the crowning Pike Place Market. The design itself engages the public with aquarium exhibitions, acknowledging intersections between life on land and in the sea; it also foregrounds back-of-house facilities, inviting the public behind the scenes at the aquarium while they encounter the structure from the outside in a nod to the neighborhood’s history of light industrial and commercial uses.

In keeping with the aquarium’s mission, LMN’s pavilion design highlights sensitivity to existing ecologies and the impact of the built environment. In addition to plans for electrification and the prioritization of sustainable materials, the project is billed to become the world’s first net-positive aquarium building.

PROJECT CREDITS
Project: Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion, Seattle
Architect: LMN Architects
Client: Seattle Aquarium Society