307_Paolo Boldi: Delta Aquarium

Paolo Boldi from Tarragona, Spain: “Italian student of Politecnico di Milano, currently living and working in Tarragona and former Erasmus student at Universitat Rovira i Virgili”

University: Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Professor(s): Jordi Sardà, Manuel Bailo

Name of Project: Delta Aquarium

Project Description: Located in the Colombian city of Santa Marta, an important commercial and touristic center as well as the most antique city of Colombia, the project is part of an urban intervention of reestablishment and restitution of a wide city portion nowadays used as a military base. This area represents a great opportunity as it constitutes the perfect union between four different scenarios. This portion of the city is intact bounded on four sides respectively by the sea, the river, the mountains and the urbanized tissue.

The Master plan provides the creation of a new urban park with different features such as a new university hub, a cultural center, a library, sports facilities and an aquarium. Mine architectural intervention provides the establishment of a new aquarium on the waterfront that both relates to the river and the sea, that represents in fact a perfect spot to host an aquarium with species of different kinds of water. The structure, based on modular concrete parts, fits partially on the coast and partially on the sea, playing with the variations of sea level and recalling in its ensemble a cliff, a perfect ecosystem for developing biodiversity of aquatic species. The alternation of full and empty spaces, creates different exhibition routes filled with water tanks, both of salt and fresh water in order to recreate the ecosystems of the surrounding and host different aquatic scenarios.

In addition to the indoor tanks there are outdoor tanks of different depths and features that sometimes use the sea salt water and sometimes the brackish water of the river mouth, establishing a perfect scenario for species of the two different ecosystems. The tanks are distinguished even by the lighting properties: the indoor tanks are fully or partially artificially lightened while the external are naturally lightened, creating different features for species of many environments and depths.

In the end, the alternation of modules of different heights and dimensions, creates two levels in the building, the floor plan mostly dedicated to the exhibition and the services for visitors, the second floor hosting the privates spaces for management, installations and the access to the tanks interiors, in order to inert and feed the species.

Instagram Username: @boldiwood