Downtown Aquarium

It looks a little garish for the classy downtown theater district, but I think its a good move for downtown to attract more people to an area that has been seriously revived.....

You should see the one in Dallas....
Talk about huge!

 

I pass by it all the time when going to work and school. Looks pretty big. Went to the one at Kemah in which I thought it was a cool place to go. I wouldnt mind going to the downtown location. Give us an update on what you think and have fun there.

 

http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51811


....across110thstreet living vicariously through the Houston BBS members

 

It looks like it is going to be pretty cool. I used to live near the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. It was the shnizity-izzhit when we were on recs and looking for things to stare at

 

Is it just me or is that a freakin' horrible website?

I played a gig at the Hard Rock Cafe on Friday and when I was loading in, I could hear the train whistle go off a few times. It is a little over the top for the theatre district but I'm looking forward to visiting.

 

My parents went to the restaurant in the acquarium or next to it. George Bush Sr was eating there with some japanese deligates.

 

I drove by the aquarium yesterday and didn't know what the heck it was... so now I know... and so now I wish I had stopped by.

 

thanks for the report, ROXRAN...what did the day end up costing you?

My wife and I are thinking about going this Thursday (my son's 3rd birthday).

 

Aquarium draws attention, but location brings controversy

By LISA GRAY
Copyright 2003 Special to the Chronicle

It is possible for a thinking person to love the Downtown Aquarium's Ferris wheel, even while driving next to it on Interstate 45, trying hard not to veer off the freeway. Houston, you realize with a laugh, always was a carnival.

It is even more possible to love the Ferris wheel when you're riding it. Traffic roars close behind you. Between Memorial's overpasses, you can glimpse a brown flash of Buffalo Bayou. You see the sliver of light between Pennzoil Place's two black monoliths. And pink, pointy RepublicBank (now Bank of America Center) never looked better.

There's an architectural joke linking the bank and the Aquarium, if you're inclined to connect the dots. Back when postmodernism was still being dethroned, critics such as Ada Louise Huxtable griped that Philip Johnson had no business sticking Flemish stepped gables atop a Houston bank's skyscraper. Out of context, the gables lost their meaning. History was reduced to wallpaper. The city became a theme park.

Huxtable, you figure, would enjoy the Ferris wheel's joke. Finally, those pink gables have a meaning. Now downtown Houston really is a theme park, or at least the backdrop for one.

Unfortunately, as you tour the rest of the Aquarium, you realize that the joke was unintentional. Wit and intelligence aren't part of the package. Tilman Fertitta, head of Landry's Restaurants Inc. and the man behind the Aquarium, made his fortune in chain restaurants, endlessly copying concepts such as Joe's Crab Shack and the Rainforest Cafe. The Downtown Aquarium is just a grander copy of another Landry's project, the Kemah Boardwalk.


For the Aquarium, Landry's did employ architects. Kirksey, recently named firm of the year by the Houston chapter of the American Institute of Architects, handled most of the site planning and building design. Other design work went to KSA, a firm whose work includes theme restaurants such as Outback Steakhouse, and to landscape architects Kudela & Weinheimer.

But as with most highly commercial projects, the client's constraints left the architects little room to maneuver. Almost certainly, Landry's squeezed a Ferris wheel into Houston's Theater District with no thought of making the skyline distinctive. The Ferris wheel in Kemah helps the center make money. The Ferris wheel in Houston exists for the same purpose.

This doesn't bother everyone. On opening day, at the Aquarium's carousel, I ran into an acquaintance who, with her husband and son, were enjoying themselves.

"You just have to turn off your brain and accept that you're in a Landry's tourist trap," she said. "Then it's fine."

So I tried. My 7-year-old daughter was with me, determined to have a good time. I didn't tell her I was appalled by the Aquarium exhibit's mix of gorgeous fish, cheesy sound effects and theme-park props, such as a treasure chest overflowing with fake doubloons.

At lunch in the Marina Matinee Café, I didn't have to turn off my brain because I couldn't hear myself think, anyway. My daughter and I sat side-by-side on a bench in a little fake boat that faced a wall-sized video screen. Ads for some of Landry's other operations, Saltgrass Steakhouses and the Kemah Boardwalk, blasted at us between kitschy clips from water-related movies and TV: The Blue Lagoon, Beach Blanket Bingo, the Beach Boys lip-synching Surfin' USA. We stared at the overpowering screen, not talking. It was a family experience for people who don't want to experience their families.

Back outside, I tried to shut down my inner critic, who wondered how the little gas-powered train could be an "authentic replica" of anything. (Is that like a genuine fake?) And what sense does it make to ride a train through a tunnel of sharks? Economic sense, maybe: The train ride differentiates the shark pool from the other Aquarium exhibits, justifying the price of a separate ticket.

The sharks live in what used to be Houston's Central Waterworks Plant, a handsome 130-year-old building whose windows are now painted over. In Houston, this counts as preservation.

The train went through the building as though through a tunnel, with sharks swimming above and beside us in a gigantic, arched acrylic tank. It is a marvelous piece of theater, so I tried to focus on that, and not on the train's annoying taped voice-over, which informed us that sharks are endangered by overfishing and that the Aquarium's "scientific staff" is working to combat the problem.

The next day I returned to the Aquarium alone. I decided that I would actually like the main building -- whose facade includes a giant waterfall, neon seahorses, signs and a fake-stone relief -- if it were moved to Interstate 59 and placed beside Magic Island, the nightclub topped with a huge head of King Tut.

But the Aquarium has no business in the Theater District, one of the rare areas of Houston where architects have attempted to exercise taste and restraint.

I'd heard the Aquarium praised for its sensitivity to Buffalo Bayou, surely the least-appreciated water flowing through a large city in the United States. The Buffalo Bayou Partnership hopes to change the way Houston looks at the bayou, transforming the city drainage ditch into a "water feature." The Downtown Aquarium could easily show that kind of bayou pride. Its six acres are tucked into an elbow of Sesquicentennial Park, the cleanest, best-landscaped stretch of the bayou.

But you could easily spend an afternoon at the Aquarium without noticing the slow-flowing, muddy water.

Perhaps Fertitta wants to spare his customers the disturbing sight of the occasional Styrofoam cup floating past. Perhaps he doesn't want them troubled by the problems associated with real water and real fish. Reality can be a bummer, and a bummer might slow your spending.

Certain people are especially vulnerable to the no-bummer brand of fantasy, mainly 7-year-olds and city boosters desperate for any form of growth. Mayor Lee Brown has called the Aquarium "the jewel in the crown" of downtown redevelopment. Jordy Tollett, president of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, defends the Aquarium's proposed viewing tower (a bad idea) by comparing it to the Eiffel Tower.

The Aquarium's supporters like to say the complex will give tourists something to do. But the Aquarium is on city-owned property, so it seems fair to ask whether this is the Houston we want to show our guests. We hate it when out-of-towners dismiss our city as crass, commercialized, ugly and environmentally insensitive. Do we expect the Aquarium to change their minds?

The boosters also praise the Aquarium as a place for children. This line of reasoning could be used to defend its too-loud, too-bright artificiality: See! Kids love that stuff! But kids also love Skittles and violent Japanese cartoons.

Besides, it is possible to design intelligently for kids. The quirky, wildly creative City Museum in St. Louis was a huge hit with me and my kids, and that museum has generated the kind of urban renewal that city planners dream about.

In the end, the best justification for the Aquarium is that the city will get a cut of Fertitta's profits. Admittedly, Houston is in desperate financial straits. But is that reason enough to throw our children, and our downtown, to the sharks?



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lisa Gray is managing editor of Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston.

 

You know, when I.M. Pei designed the Pyramid entraces to the Louvre Parisians were appalled. How could you put such a modern-looking structure next to such an historic building? But now, people think that the Louvre entrance is a stroke of genius.

So, what is appalling now may be concidered genius in a few years when everyone is used to it.

Who knows? I'm just kind of dissapointed that the aquarium is nothing more than a "midway hawker" luring people into a restaurant. It would have been really cool to have a "real", scientific aquarium as part of Houston's tourist scene.

 

My wife and I went to the aquarium on Monday. I was disappointed. There sure wasn't much to look at. The aquariums they do have are beautiful...just not enough of them, imo.

We ate at The Aquarium afterwards. That place is a ripoff, again, imo. I'm not cheap but they are overpriced to be sure.