As the one river in New York City without a ton of commuter ferries, East River leaves a lot to be desired outside of its unfettered view of the Manhattan skyline. Italian architecture group Lissoni Architettura has a plan to finally make the East River useful with plans for a futuristic aquarium set underwater.
The design won the architecture firm first place in Arch Out Loud's speculative architecture competition, which called for architects to imagine innovative uses for New York's waterfronts.
"The competition proposed the integration of a waterfront park, testing the typically 'introverted' entity of an aquarium as well as the nature of the New York City riverfront property that has been largely seized by high end private residential buildings," the competition statement read.
Lissoni Architettura proposed an aquarium that would be wedged in the Eleventh Street Basin in Queen. Here are a few concept sketches of what that aquarium, dubbed the Aquatrium, would look like:
The aquarium would be accessible via two boardwalks.
It would feature eight different "biomes" featuring wildlife from four oceans and four seas.
At night, a "living shell" would clamp over the park...
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