The National Aquarium is planning a $7.75 million effort to replace “failing” glass in its rooftop pyramid and enhance it with high-efficiency LED lights that will illuminate the city skyline at night.
The project comes after glass panes above the aquarium’s Upland Tropical Rain Forest exhibit started to shatter and fall. All 684 panes in the rooftop pyramid will be replaced starting early next year.
Aquarium president and CEO John Racanelli spoke with Baltimore Fishbowl about the changes planned for the Inner Harbor landmark as it approaches the 40th anniversary of its opening in August of 1981. The interview has been condensed and edited.
Baltimore Fishbowl: The aquarium staff knew that the rooftop glass would have to be replaced at some point, because it was getting to the end of its expected life span. A report to state legislators this year talked about glass ‘failing’ at the aquarium in 2019. Did panes of glass break and fall into the Rain Forest exhibit below?
John Racanelli: Panes of glass did shatter. It’s safety glass, so in some cases it would shatter in place. However, the panes of glass on the actual roof piece, that sits at about a 45-degree angle, if they broke, glass would fall. I know of at least one case where that happened. After that, it was imperative to speed up the process to replace all of the glass panes and implement additional safety measures. We could not run the risk of that ever happening again.
Q: What caused the glass to shatter?
A: The crux of the issue is aging, along with a chemical process that occurs inside of the actual glass. The pane of the glass expands and contracts, but when it expands too far, it exceeds the limits of the frame that it is in. Then, the stress of the expanded piece of glass, which used to have more flexibility in earlier years, becomes too much and the whole pane shatters at once.
Q: How many panes have shattered?
A: Currently, we have replaced approximately a half dozen panes and they cost about $18,000 each to replace.
Q: So the writing was on that wall, so to speak, that this will continue to happen unless you do something more comprehensive? Is that why the aquarium is replacing all 684 panes versus replacing them one by one as they shatter?
A: To use a very common metaphor, it’s a lot like your roof at home. Over the years, you patch a hole here and there, but after a while you realize that it’s not going to work anymore and it’s time to replace the entire roof.
Q: Did anyone get hurt by the shattered glass?
A: No one was hurt, and the glass was not near anyone. The glass is specifically designed to shatter like other safety glasses you might find in your car windshield. It rained down in tiny pieces like safety glass will do. The event did signal our team to speed up this particular project.
Q: What did the aquarium do?
A: Safety is always a top priority for the National Aquarium so the exhibit was immediately closed and remained closed for several weeks to allow us time to put up a protective construction barrier that would catch any glass, should any other panes shatter. The barrier that was put into place is the one that had already been designed for the construction phase of our project. It’s a white ballistic cloth with a netting that’s sown into it, so it has the strength to catch anything heavy. It’s also impenetrable so even small pieces of safety glass, if they broke, would fall into it and not fall down onto the animals, the exhibit or any people.
Q: So while the work is underway, the exhibit can remain open and people can continue to go through it safely?
A: Yes. Baltimore City had generously provided us with a $250,000 grant spread over two years that we were able to use for the purchase and installation of the construction barrier that is in place and will be used throughout construction.
Q: Will there be any change to the shape of the roof? Does the steel pyramid itself get replaced?
A: No. The pyramid and the steel itself is still sound after 40 years.
Q: A lot of buildings get ‘reskinned’ so they have a new exterior, but the work typically happens when the building is empty. How can you do this work and keep the exhibit intact at the same time? Will the glass come off all at once?
A: That’s an interesting detail and challenge. If we were to hire a crane and take all the glass off at once to put on the new panes, we would have to take down the exhibit, remove all the animals, and take out a lot of the vegetation. That’s because, with the roof off for that long, no matter what time of year, you’re going to create issues. It’s either going to be too hot and dry or too wet and cold.
Q: How are you doing it?
A: We made the decision early on to do this in small increments, between eight and 12 panes per day. They will take off a section, replace it and close up for the night every day. The drawback is we really can’t do any of this in winter months, which is when we typically do our major capital projects inside the building, when our attendance is lowest.
Q: How to you keep the birds in the exhibit from flying out as workers are replacing the panes?
A: A little-known fact, there is a bird screen below the area where they will be working. The bird screen has always been there to prevent birds from flying up and getting into the rafters.
Q: Is the construction barrier noticeable?
A: You can kind of see it; it has been there for more than a year. It’s funny. I don’t think anybody has noticed because it doesn’t impact the experience.
Q: It doesn’t block any views?
A: It doesn’t affect the experience. In fact, our curator pointed out that the trees are probably a little happier because there aren’t hot spots, as it mitigates the heat transmission into the space.
Q: What’s the timeline for repairs?
A: Our timeline is to start the actual work early in 2022, hopefully in March, and complete it in the summer of ‘22. We may need to stretch into fall, but that protects us from the winter.
Q: Will the visitor experience be any different once the work is done?
A: The experience will not change for the guest. It’s a structural improvement, that we are going to spend almost $8 million in order to make so the guest notices nothing different. However, for the rest of our lifetimes and hopefully well beyond, there will never be another failure. I really do think this is the kind of invisible improvement you have to do in a major public facility like ours in order for it to remain at a world-class standard. In addition, this new glass will last at least as long as the old glass if not outlive it by 50 or 60 years in total.
Q: It sounds as if you’re trying to stay true to the original design.
A: Yes. But there is one enhancement that we’re planning, and we haven’t really spread the word on this yet because we didn’t know if we could afford it.
Q: What is the enhancement?
A: We are going to have an LED outlining on the vertical faces of the pyramid. There are three faces; there’s a west-facing side, a south-facing side, and there’s the roof piece that faces northeast. The two triangles that make up the vertical sides will have lighting that will be LED [Light Emitting Diode] high-efficiency. We hope to be able to use it to mirror the wave [on the south end of the building] to have a blue triangle, and we may be able to use it to put up purple or orange as the season dictates.
Q: It will be a companion of sorts to the illuminated Domino Sugars sign across the harbor, also LED, at about the same height?
A: It’s a very interesting juxtaposition, you’re right.
Q: The LED lights will trace the outline of the pyramid, creating a triangle effect on two sides?
A: It would be a triangle, yes. The lighting inside the Rain Forest at night will remain the same as it’s designed to support the animals and plants that live there. However, by lining the steel perimeter of the two vertical faces of the pyramid with light which projects outward, it’s actually attractive but also doesn’t create any potential for putting the animals inside at any kind of risk.
Q: The colors would be purple and orange as options and the main color would be blue?
A: We’re trying to make sure that we’ll be able to do purple, orange and blue.
Q: The primary color will be blue?
A: Exactly.
Q: The Tennessee Aquarium, which was designed by the same architect, Peter Chermayeff of Cambridge Seven Associates, did something similar when it opened in 1992.
A: He took the concept down there, but he did four little pyramids that are in a kind of pattern. It’s visually appealing and is very similar. In fact, it is blue. They also outline their pyramids in a comparable fashion. It’s a nice effect. It’s subtle, but it draws the eye.
Q: How will this affect the illuminated blue wave graphic on the end of the building on Pier 3? Will the wave change colors too?
A: Architecturally, we didn’t want to overpower the wave. We don’t want to make the wave change colors. That’s our hallmark. It got changed from neon to LED about 10 years ago and it has held up extremely well. It will be a nice effect to match that color on the pyramid.
Q: Will the pyramid lights be on all night?
A: We really haven’t sorted that out. I think having the capability is what matters.
Q: What about the specifications for the glass? The current glass is a double-pane tempered safety glass. Will the new glass have a greenish tint like the existing glass has?
A: It is the same kind of tempered safety glass. Being that it’s 40 years later, everything is made to higher standards and its insulative properties are greater because of this as well. I don’t know if it will have that same greenish hue. I sense that it will because I know safely glass on automobiles has that kind of green.
Q: How is the aquarium taking advantage of advances in double pane glass technology over the past 40 years so this shattering problem doesn’t happen again?
A: The glass we have we assume may have nickel inclusion. When glass has nickel inclusion, there can be spontaneous combustion. We know there is some deterioration in the seals which can allow glass to shift in the frames. When the gaskets are working, it holds the two pieces of glass together. When the gaskets deteriorate the glass is less structurally sound. We believe this is what led to the glass failure. In new technology nickel is eliminated. The new glass will meet all current building code and performance standards.
Q: Who is doing the work?
A: The architect is Design Collective, DCI, and the contractor is Plano-Coudon. Both Baltimore firms. Interestingly — although we didn’t set it up this way, they just both won the competition – they are the pair that also did the Animal Care and Rescue Center. They have a great track record for WMBE [women- and minority-owned business enterprise] contracting. They did a really remarkable job with that. Most of the credit goes to Plano-Coudon on the Animal Care and Rescue Center. And as with the Animal Care and Rescue Center, our objective will be to meet or exceed the city’s requirement for WMBE [hiring].
Q: Will the new glass be bird-friendly, designed to prevent birds from flying into it?
A: I’m really glad you asked that question. I do have good news there. Yes, the glass will be fritted to protect the birds. We’ve actually covered about 3,000 square feet of our current glass — mostly Australia and the main entrance area — with dot patterns that are stuck on in sheets, and they work very well. The main thing is that they protect the birds. The dot pattern sheets don’t last forever, as it degrades with the sun and the rain, eventually needing to be replaced.
This will be the first glass in the aquarium where we’re actually acid-etching it so it will be permanent, and that fritting is designed to be the current highest state-of-the-art in terms of preventing birds from flying into it. There’s a whole science behind that and we’ve been working closely with Lights Out Baltimore [a local organization that advocates for bird-friendly glass.] We think the building can be a really good example of how you can make a glass structure bird-friendly and lose nothing in terms of vision out or aesthetics.
Q: Even the roof surface that slants at a 45-degree angle will get fritting?
A: Yes, it will also have fritting. If you’re going to protect the birds, you have to protect all the glass. So the ultimate goal is for all the glass in this facility to be bird-safe. It’s going to take a while to get to that point.
Q: Have birds been injured at the aquarium? Do birds tend to fly into the glass pyramid? Has that been a problem?
A: The pyramid is not so much of a challenge because it’s above the treetop heights…At treetop height, birds are much more inclined to fly into glass, especially our kind of glass, because they see a tree inside the glass and they think, I want to fly to that tree, and then they hit the glass. Therefore, getting the lower levels of Australia and the entrance glass bird-safe was the first priority because it was where birds were more likely to hit the glass.
Q: You’ve had birds fly into the glass?
A: We have had bird strikes. Nothing like other buildings. Biologists that work for Lights Out Baltimore go out every morning throughout the migratory season and do a census of birds injured and killed. It’s no secret, I think the number is three billion birds die in American cities every year from hitting glass, so it’s a huge issue. Funny for us, and this is again one of those examples of the special genius of Peter Chermayeff, the Rain Forest, being five stories up, is up above the zone that’s most dangerous. Still, we were very eager to make sure the new glass that we are installing is bird-safe.
Q: Does the fritting have any other benefit?
A: There’s a second reason for frosting the glass. When the aquarium opened and the Rain Forest was brand new, that glass was clear. It was the first thermal pane glass used in Maryland, as I’m told, and over time that glass frosted itself mainly through the failure of the layer between the two panes and the failure of the seal which then let in moisture which then fogged up.
My first visit to the aquarium was in 1984, and I remember going up in the Rain Forest. It was an August day, and it was hot as blazes. That ambient temperature has fallen fairly dramatically over the years in part because the glass frosted itself. When the design team came in to assess the glass and make a recommendation, they said, well, you’ve already got frosted glass. It’s not a leap of faith to consider frosting all the glass permanently in the new installation. So that was the decision that we took, in part because nature had solved a problem that mankind had created, and it was a fairly elegant solution.
Q: From inside, will visitors still be able to look out and see the Inner Harbor through the fritted glass?
A: Yes. Fritting is a kind of etching, a line striping, so you can see out of fritted glass pretty well. It’s like looking out thorough glass on a bus that’s been wrapped with graphic images. From the outside, you see an image on the side of the bus. From the inside you can see out, and with the fritting the visibility out is even better. So yes, you’ll still be able to see the skyline, the city, the waterfront, the harbor. If you’re looking at it from the outside in, you’ll see less detail and you will see a pattern, and if you’re a bird that’s a good thing.
Q: It sounds like you’re trying to do what Domino Sugar is doing with its sign replacement, put up something new that pretty much looks like what was there before.
A: That is exactly right, and I think that integrity is crucial. The aquarium is an iconic part of our waterfront skyline. This building was so ahead of its time that it remains, in my personal view, one of the best examples of Brutalism that has survived the ages. That is a testament to the genius of Peter Chermayeff and Cambridge Seven, that in 1977 and 1978, when he actually drew these plans, he drew something that would still look contemporary and would hold up in 2020. That’s pretty amazing.
Q: Chermayeff was also a pioneer in adding a terrestrial exhibit to an aquarium and giving it as much prominence as the water-based exhibits. Nobody had done that before the National Aquarium. Now a lot of aquariums incorporate terrestrial exhibits under glass, such as the Tennessee Aquarium and the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.
A: Even the Smithsonian, with Amazonia. All of these under-glass rain forest exhibits that have come into being since, were inspired by the one here in Baltimore. I would hazard to say there are no fewer than 20 throughout North America, and every one of them was inspired by what was created here for the National Aquarium.
Q: Have any other aquariums had this problem with shattering glass? Because the National Aquarium was a pioneer in introducing a terrestrial exhibit, maybe it’s one of the first to have a problem that others will have, too.
A: Exactly. Every single one of them will face this conundrum, but I have a feeling that we’re one of the first.
Q: Have you thought of selling the old glass as a souvenir, to raise money, once you take it down? The Johns Hopkins Hospital did that when it replaced a slate roof. Part of the old Domino glass is being turned into souvenirs.
A: We thought of that and unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that. It was a great idea and I think the National Arboretum actually did something like this a few years back. These panes are four feet by four feet, so they’re certainly ungainly. You can’t cut them because they’re tempered safety glass. And the oddest part is they are pretty severely degraded. The moisture has penetrated the air space between the two panes in some cases and each one is foggy in a different fashion from the next.
We are going to do a cool thing though. When we do the new glass, we’re also going to have the fabricator make one special pane and we’re going to engrave the names of all the donors on it and then display it somewhere in or near the Rain Forest for all to see, for hopefully many years to come.
Q: A permanent display.
A: An acknowledgment, for the state first, because they’ve been far and away our most important donor, but also the city, the Abell Foundation, quite a number of private citizens and others who have stepped up to help.
Q: The glass fabrication is supposed to start just around the time the aquarium marks its 40th anniversary on August 8, 2021. What are you doing to celebrate that milestone?
A: Not as much as we wish we could. Unfortunately, COVID came right at a time where we should have been ramping up for that as opposed to pulling in our horns and surviving. We had to rule out a myriad of plans that our teams were working on. That’s COVID. You can just pin that one on COVID.
Q: Starting this project can be a way to celebrate the anniversary.
A: Although it won’t happen exactly in line with our anniversary, the real kick-off to the Rain Forest project will be the fabrication of the glass. That contract has yet to be assigned, but that will be fabricated somewhere else and that project will begin in the fall. We do agree that the celebration of our 40th year and entering into the next years, the next decade, starts with this important improvement to the aquarium, which truly is to maintain for its next 40 years the same kind of world-class standard that we’ve upheld so far.
Q: That’s a big responsibility.
A: Sometimes I feel like the ghost of William Donald Schaefer is watching, and I hope that he’s watching us with pride. I hope that he’s looking at what we’re doing with this aquarium that he and others were so far ahead of their time in envisioning. I hope he’s looking at how we’re stewarding it and feeling good that we’ve maintained that vision and we’ve maintained that level of pride for this city, because it is a responsibility that we take very seriously.
Q: You’re essentially taking a preservation-oriented approach.
A: I’ve told my team many times: We’re the current stewards. Those that have come before us – previous directors Nick Brown, Dave Pittenger — did their part, and there will be many more to come after us. Our job is to preserve this institution, improve it and make it all the more enduring because I hope it will be here for centuries. It should be.
