Kansas City’s new Sobela Ocean Aquarium home to nearly 8,000 animals in 34 habitats

Kansas City’s new Sobela Ocean Aquarium is a world-class facility home to nearly 8,000 animals in 34 habitats ranging from small tanks to a giant 400,000-gallon shark tank. 

The 65,000-sf facility takes visitors from a shallow tropical shore, following a “warm current into the melting pot of the deep ocean, and is carried via a cold current from the depths, through the ocean’s forests, emerging at a cool Pacific coast,” according to a news release.

Exhibit designs by Spacehaus integrate with architectural cues such as changing light quality, spatial variation, and physical descent. The experience augments unique exhibit designs “to engage visitor’s emotions, spark their curiosity, and build in them a passion for the ocean.”  

“This project creates that opportunity for all, introducing visitors to our global ocean by using the concept of marine currents as an interpretive framework,” according to lead architect EHDD.

“Despite holding nearly 650,000 gallons of water in total, the aquarium has obtained a LEED silver certification,” says David Dowell, AIA, principal of El Dorado who led the support architecture team. “Some of the sustainability goals include capturing stormwater on site, significantly reducing water and energy use, and maximizing natural light while also bird-safing the structure through fritted glass.” 

The aquarium is the first project in the Kansas City area to use CarbonCure technology, which introduces captured CO₂ into fresh concrete to reduce its carbon footprint by 22%.

The aquarium is now the largest building on the zoo campus. It opens to the zoo’s main pedestrian promenade with an image that is welcoming in scale, and warm in materiality. Located in Swope Park in Kansas City, Mo., the Kansas City Zoo & Aquarium,  founded in 1909, spans 202 acres and receives about one million visitors per year.

Owner and/or developer: Sobela Ocean Aquarium at the Kansas City Zoo and Aquarium 
Design architect: EHDD and El Dorado 
MEP engineer: Antella
Structural engineer: Leigh & O'Kane
General contractor/construction manager: JE Dunn