Project: Aquadream
Location: Casablanca, Morocco
Industry: Retail
Application: Aquarium
Products Used: R-Cast™ Custom Cast & Bonding

The world’s first and largest cone-shaped aquarium with an inner acrylic cylinder housing a glass elevator awaits shoppers at the luxury Morocco Mall in Casablanca. Aquadream, the 31 foot tall (9.3 meter) acrylic aquarium designed and built in conjunction with sister company International Concept Management, Inc. (ICM), is the centerpiece of the luxury giga-mall along Morocco’s coast.

The aquarium was designed to offer an engaging experience, emphasizing education and the importance of preserving the world’s oceans. To accomplish this, ICM designed and built an aquarium that would literally immerse guests into a coral reef environment.

The result is an R-Cast aquarium holding 264,000 gallons (one million liters) of saltwater. The outside of the aquarium resembles an upside-down cone made entirely of R-Cast acrylic, with a glass elevator traveling in a clear R-Cast acrylic tube to transport shoppers to the mall’s top floor. The five minute ride takes guests through a tropical reef, getting them nose-to-nose with sharks, rays, and thousands of other fish while educating them about ocean life.

One of the challenges faced in building this aquarium was expected earthquake activity. With Casablanca situated in a relatively high seismic zone, safety was paramount in the design. ICM’s solution kept the aquarium as a freestanding structure sitting on its own concrete slab separate from the mall. This cushions it against tremors and isolates it from any movement the rest of the mall may be experiencing during an earthquake. As testament to RPT’s and ICM’s solid engineering and design, two small tremors rippled through during the construction of the aquarium without damaging any component of the structure.

Transporting the aquarium from the port to the job site also required extra planning – and police involvement. A convoy of four oversized trucks hauled the outer cylinder sections to the job site at 3 a.m. with a police escort to ensure that the acrylic panels arrive safely and that motorists were alerted of the oversized objects on the road.

RPT assisted ICM in the engineering and manufacture of all the R-Cast acrylic panels used in the construction of Aquadream and helped with the on-site assembly. Because the finished outer cylinder was too large to ship in one piece, RPT fabricated it in seven sections. Once on-site, RPT and ICM teams bonded the pieces together to create the conical exterior. The inner cylinder arrived fully-assembled - from sister company RPT Asia, Ltd.. in Thailand - which was then lowered into the center of the aquarium.

The exterior of the aquarium is nearly 40 feet in diameter (12.1 meters) at the bottom of the cone and nearly 44 feet in diameter (13.4 meters) at the top, with acrylic panels more than 26 feet (7.8  meters) tall and 4.7 inches thick (12cm). The inner cylinder is 11 feet in diameter (3.4 meters) and four inches thick (10cm). In total, the aquarium holds more than 1,000 metric tons of saltwater.

The aquarium will house nearly 3,000 aquatic animals representing 41 different species and is open to the public during normal mall hours.