Klein & Hoffman And Partners Take Deep Dive Into New Vision For Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium

Ahead of its 100th anniversary in 2030, John G. Shedd Aquarium has embarked on an ambitious multiyear project to prepare the Chicago institution for its second century. 

Its $500M Centennial Commitment strategic plan includes investments in community engagement and conservation science. It also includes a significant reimagining of the aquarium's footprint.

Known as the Experience Evolution project, the transformation and renovation of the aquarium’s historic home consists of two very different but complementary goals.

Shedd intends to stay faithful to the look and feel of its terra cotta and Georgian marble building that is a beloved anchor of the city’s lakefront museum campus. But aquarium leadership also recognizes that major updates are required if Shedd is to continue to serve the needs of its more than 30,000 animal residents and millions of annual visitors for another 100 years.

“We've referred to the work as both a transformation and a restoration, which at face value sounds oxymoronic because how can it be both?” said Sarah Hezel, vice president of design and exhibits for Shedd. “However, I think that is the real art and balance of this whole project.”

Hezel said portions of the project involve restoring the prior grandeur of the building while in other places improving both animal and guest experiences.

A project team that includes structural and architectural engineer Klein & Hoffman will oversee a major expansion of habitats and life support systems for many of the approximately 1,200 species of animals that reside at Shedd. The Experience Evolution will also improve the visitor experience with enhanced accessibility and improved guest circulation throughout the aquarium’s exhibit areas. 

Highlights include an enhanced two-story entry experience and a dual-habitat exhibit in the building’s rotunda that will get visitors close to new coral reef and freshwater habitats, each of them 12 feet deep.

The north side of the building will be gutted and replaced with a new “building within a building” consisting of 16 habitats, two of them with 17 feet of water. To support these modifications, some of the foundations beneath the 1930-built building are to be reinforced with micropiles to support the weight of the exhibits and the 4 million gallons of water that continuously circulate throughout the building. In addition, the exterior of Shedd's north terrace will be reclad to match the building's existing marble cladding. 

“The work underway here is a fascinating push and pull between restoring a historic jewel box of a beaux-arts building and ensuring the interior operations meet the current best practices in animal care and provide a best-in-class guest experience,” Hezel said.

To bring this two-pronged vision to life, Shedd enlisted the expertise of partners including Klein & Hoffman. K&H is working closely with project architects Valerio Dewalt Train, with joint venture Pepper/BMI Construction as the general contractor.

Kathleen Strnad, project manager and senior associate with K&H, said the firm’s relationship with the aquarium began in the 1990s as the structural engineer on Shedd’s last major addition in 2003, Wild Reef.

“That was a substantial project, but the centennial project is much larger in terms of scale and scope and is one of the largest of its type that Klein & Hoffman has had the opportunity to work on,” Strnad said.

The multiphase project will encompass multiple disciplines and activities, from selecting materials to match Shedd’s aesthetics to ensuring the historic structure complies with the latest building codes. All the while, significant portions of the aquarium will remain accessible during the work, with animal and visitor safety and comfort a top priority.

Work will be staged in four phases to allow the aquarium to remain open to the public during construction. The first phase began in April and is nearing completion.

Sheri Andrews, an architect and principal with VDT, described Phase 1 as a “surgical intervention” to prepare the building for the major renovations to follow. This involves making changes and upgrades to the building’s existing infrastructure, including walls, floors and its extensive network of pipes.

“Phase 1 is completely back-of-house and involves moving the puzzle pieces of the building to free up spaces for the next phases, where we’ll essentially be putting a new aquarium into a historic building,” Andrews said.  

Like K&H, VDT is no stranger to Shedd. VDT was the lead architect on the 2009 renovation of the aquarium’s Abbott Oceanarium, which is home to beluga whales and other aquatic mammals.

“That gave us a little bit of the flavor of working in an aquatic-serving building, with the water and humidity factors, for instance,” Andrews said. “As architects, we are trained to keep water out of the building, but at Shedd, you’re keeping hundreds of thousands of gallons of water in the building. So that is a fundamental shift that starts on Day 1.”

VDT founding principal Joe Valerio said technologies like computer-aided design have advanced greatly since his firm last worked with the aquarium. That will help the team surmount the many technical and logistical challenges of the complex project, but Valerio said that the teamwork evident on the Experience Evolution project has been instrumental in keeping the work moving.

“Everybody on this project knows what they are doing and is adept at moving quickly,” he said. “And Shedd provides tremendous leadership in the sense that they're very into collaboration. But once they make a decision, it's a decision. I think that helps a lot.”

The second phase of the project is underway and scheduled to be completed in 2024. It will impact areas of the aquarium that are visible to visitors, such as an enhanced welcome plaza and entrance and renovations to the aquarium’s rotunda exhibits.

Structural engineer and architect Michelle Ryland, also a K&H senior associate, said historic renovations are nothing new for her firm, but the needs of Shedd’s unique tenants transcend conventional design or engineering considerations.

“With the Experience Evolution project, there is the added focus on Shedd’s aquatic life and on each species' specific needs and welfare,” she said. “The interaction of humans and animals is considered in all aspects of the work to create a great experience for all when the work is completed later this decade.”

This article was produced in collaboration between Klein & Hoffman and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.