Aquarium Manufacturer Reynolds Polymer Technology Lends Itself to Yet another World Record
RPT provided acrylic for the towering tank at the new Avia Park Mall in Moscow. The freestanding cylinder reaches nearly 75 feet into the air, making it the tallest such aquarium in the world.
For many a mind’s eye, Moscow is linked to images of historic Yaroslavl domes and perma-frosted windows. However, the city of the Red Square is now home to the largest indoor shopping mall in all of Europe—Avia Park. The principal landmark at Avia is nothing less than the tallest cylindrical aquarium in the world—a raised transparent column, filled with thousands of gallons of ocean, and constructed of R-Cast® acrylic.
Visually, the aquarium at Avia Park can be described as four stories of animated sculpture, home to 2,500 specimens of fish and majestic, spiraling Red Sea reef. Structurally, however, the attraction is more a model of precise engineering than aesthetic craft. What appears to be a single column actually consists of 21 separate panels of R-Cast® chemically bonded into seven sections that weigh as much as 13 tons each.
All told, the aquarium is 75 feet tall, 20 feet in diameter and holds 98,000 gallons of salt water. To contain such pressure, the walls were engineered to be up to eight inches thick, requiring a total of 55 metric tons of acrylic. “The tank is deep enough to require decompression stops for the divers who clean it,” explained George Papoutsoglou, Sales Representative for RPT. “This is no run-of-the-mill project, even by RPT standards. Avia Park is extraordinary.”
“This project involved the world’s tallest cylindrical aquarium in Europe’s largest mall in Russia’s largest city,” said Matt Houlihan, Vice President of RPT. “This is the type of high-profile project that our team excels in. I truly believe Reynolds Polymer Technology to be the most dynamic company in the industry.”
The aquarium project was produced by International Concept Management, a renowned firm that has partnered with RPT on several projects in the past including the AquaDom, Scheels All Sports, and Morocco Mall.
