The aim of this project is to extract the visitor from the city life and absorb him into another world. The underwater world of seas and lakes is mainly unknown and consists of a big amount of different ecosystems. The project started from a personal fascination and hopes to provoke astonishment for a world that is only known by few. In this way it hopes to create awareness of the value and importance of these marine ecosystems.
The site in Maastricht, along the Meuse, forms an aquatic connection between the Meuse and the basin and completes the public loop of the city. The site lends itself to the aquarium program in combination with thermal baths. The project is about seeing and being seen. The visitor will be led by the flow of the oceans along all continents, just like the hydrodynamical streams at different speeds, in this route of viewing and being watched.
It takes you on a trip from north to south, east to west in this monolithic tower. These spaces in this building block are based on removing, rather than adding elements. Voids are subtracted around the main circulation of the visitor of the aquaria, according to the represented ocean and its life. This is the circulation of watching. In addition, there is the thermal bath circulation of being watched. The thermal baths nest in the block, adjacent to the circulation of watching.
The project invites contemplation by the routing through the specific sequence of spaces. The light will be extraordinary, depending on how it diffracts through air or through water. Each space represents an ocean with different observable characteristics such as light, material, temperature, space and odor. The material in a coral-colored concrete also represents the red earth around the Atlantic Ocean.