Important Milestone Reached on Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion

This Pavilion will invite visitors to explore the ocean, understand how actions from Seattle to Indonesia affect shared communities and planet, and support the revitalization of Seattle's waterfront.

Turner Construction Company is pleased to share that it has completed the concrete pour of the main tank of the Ocean Pavilion at the Seattle Aquarium. The tank is two feet thick at minimum and includes 680 cubic yards of concrete and 355 tons of rebar - four times more rebar than a typical core. Here is a time lapse video of the pour.

Planning and construction on the $160 million Ocean Pavilion have been underway for the past two years. The Pavilion, which is designed by LMN Architects, is expected to open in 2024.

In planning for the pour, that essentially will have no straight edges, we worked with our partners to create 229 panels that were CNCed foam glued to Peri backing and sprayed with a truck bed liner. Our team used Rhino and Grasshoper software for concrete geometry that has double curvatures.

Additional construction milestones that will be achieved this year are completion of the shell, core and roof, main exhibit form, habitat structures, and installation of the habitat acrylic windows and animal life support systems.

In support of the Seattle Aquarium's mission to cultivate an ethos of care and action on behalf of marine life, we are working to achieve goals for net-zero emissions and net-positive energy for the Pavilion and are analyzing embodied carbon in the new building. We are selecting building materials that are free of toxic chemicals and are being deliberate in our construction material choices by minimizing plastics, vinyl, biocides, and red-list materials.

Learn more about the project at www.seattleaquarium.org/ocean-pavilion.