In this month’s DownEast Magazine there is an article about Tenji’s work in creating the iconic LL Bean aquarium. A River Runs Through It was produced in celebration of LL Bean’s 100th anniversary.
Photograph by Jason Crain (From DownEast Magazine).
New Article About LL Bean Aquarium
May 7th, 2012Coming Soon To The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh
March 5th, 2012The newest addition to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences will be the spectacular Nature Research Center (NRC). It is a 80,000 square foot wing just next to the existing Museum. Tenji just wrapped up a week-long installation after over a year of design and planning with the design and Museum teams.
Our contributions are a dozen living exhibits from turtles, snakes, zebra danios, freshwater mussels and more. One display features decomposing creatures being consumed by detritivores to tell the story of the cycle of life on the forest floor.
The Museum is a dynamic place and as one of the original founders said in the late 1800’s:
The building of a museum is a never-ending work. A finished museum is a dead museum…
-Herbert Hutchinson Brimley
The new wing will be opening in April 2012 and will be a must-see if in the Raleigh area.
Tenji Building New Cabela’s Display In West Virginia
January 31st, 2012Tenji is pleased to announce that we have been awarded the contract to build a LSS for the new Cabela’s store in Charleston, West Virginia. The 80,000-square-foot store will be located in the Southridge Centre shopping area off U.S. Highway 119, and will be Cabela’s second retail store in West Virginia, joining the Wheeling location. Tenji will be constructing a 6,000 gallon freshwater display, a quarantine system, and bait holding system.
Location of Cabela's new store in West Virginia.
Bigelow Laboratory’s New Center for Ocean Health
January 27th, 2012Tenji is pleased to announce that we have been selected to construct the seawater laboratory and associated systems at Bigelow Laboratory’s new Center for Ocean Health in East Boothbay Harbor, Maine. The third building on the new 64-acre campus, The Center for Ocean Health and its associated shore facility will occupy 19,200 square feet and have facilities for plankton and algae research.
“The COH will bring scientists together in a unified facility, where we can develop a multi-disciplinary, multi-scale approach to ocean health that will provide improved management tools to support healthy, productive and resilient ocean ecosystems,” said Laboratory Executive Director, Dr. Graham Shimmield.
Tenji will be working closely with ABM Mechanical and Consigli Construction to create this state-of-the-art facility. When fully completed, the Ocean Science and Education campus will provide over 60,000 square feet of laboratory, education and administrative space; replacing the Laboratory’s leased facilities in West Boothbay Harbor.
Bigelow Center for Ocean Health Rendering (courtesy of Perkins + Will).
Mobius Science Center Coming This Year To Spokane, Washington
January 5th, 2012Tenji has been engaged in the design and planning of a new science center for several months now. It is not due to open until the fall of 2012, but here is a preview of the Mobius Science Center in Spokane, Washington.
The living components will feature two large, 10’ x 4’ glass tanks of turtles and a variety of other reptiles. Adjacent to these exhibits, there will be a wall of five terrestrial displays featuring insects and spiders and snakes (oh my!).
There will also be a a variety of hands on science and technology exhibits to explore. Below is a description of the museum from the Mobius web site:
Mobius Spokane was founded in 2005 through the merger of the Inland Northwest Science and Technology Center and the Children’s Museum of Spokane. With the mission of stimulating minds, inspiring careers and instilling wonder across the Inland Northwest with thought-provoking, entertaining and experiential science programs and exhibits, our first phase was launched with Mobius Kids, an inquiry-based, informal science and arts education center that serves the K-6 population. Since opening its doors in September 2005, nearly 400,000 guests have visited; underserved families have benefited through camp scholarships, bus passes and sponsored family memberships. The second phase of Mobius Spokane will be Mobius Science Center (MSC), a 26,000 SF facility featuring seventy-five hands-on, interactive exhibits with complementary programs and demonstrations. Our multi-sensory, multi-generational approach to learning will encourage engagement in the sciences and will be a substantive entertainment destination for our region’s families.
As these components get further developed, we’ll post more images. Stand by!
Reelfoot, For Real!
December 20th, 2011One of the most powerful earthquakes on record was at the border of south-east Missouri and western Tennessee in 1812. Known as the New Madrid earthquake, it was so strong that that it caused the Mississippi River to breach and flood the newly created sink holes formed by the quake.
One water feature that remains from the quake is the 18,000 acre Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. It’s a famous sport fishing location and important habitat to the wildlife that abounds there.
Rendering of the new focus exhibits.
The Discovery Place of America, currently under construction in Union City, Tennessee, will have an area dedicated to educating visitors about this interesting natural area. Tenji was awarded the opportunity to design/build the live exhibits and associated life support systems. The centerpiece display is a 20,000 gallon interpretation of the flooded forest that still exists in Reelfoot Lake and their associated fish community.
There are also eight semi-aquatic to terrestrial focus displays that highlight a variety of other species that flank the Reelfoot Lake display.
Tenji’s first step is get the Reelfoot tank in the building in pieces and assemble it so the rest of the building can be completed. We hope to have the big tank in by the spring of 2012. The tank is currently in production in San Diego.
We’ll remobilize when the space is ready to install the remaining focus displays and finish the insert and LSS on the big tank.
Work Continues On Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Ecosystems Science (CoE CRES) Research Facility
December 18th, 2011After an intense week of plumbing, electrical, and controls work, the new Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Ecosystems Science (CoE CRES) Research Facility seawater system is nearly complete. All LSS systems were thoroughly tested and now we wait for completion of the structure of the outdoor coral lab to be built so we can finish.
Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Ecosystems Science (CoE CRES) Research Facility Update
November 14th, 2011The new Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Ecosystems Science (CoE CRES) Research Facility continues to come together. This past week we finished installing some of the control/monitoring systems and worked with the plumbers to begin connecting all the LSS equipment. Our friend Julian Sprung of Two Little Fishies stopped by to take a look at the installation and we spent a very enjoyable evening having sushi in Fort Lauderdale and then went to hear Stan Waterman talk about some of his recent underwater shoots in Indonesia. It was quite inspiring to hear Stan, a man in his 80s, talk with such enthusiasm about discovering macro videography after a lifetime of shooting large subjects like sharks and whales. He was quite literally giddy with excitement talking about nudibranchs that he caught on film.
Julian Sprung, pictured on the roof of the new facility, stopped by our project at NOVA to take a look at the LSS.
Tenji Visits Post-disaster Aquamarine Fukushima
November 10th, 2011Last week, Tenji made a special visit to our longtime friends at Aquamarine Fukushima in Onahama, Japan. The first floor of the aquarium was ravaged by the tsunami and subsequently all of the life support equipment was incapacitated. The vast majority of the collection was lost and damage to the interior was extreme. Amazingly, the glass building remained intact.
Our visit was just 7 months after the disaster and it was stunning to see how things had largely returned to normal for the aquarium. It was very inspirational and impressive to see the AMF building, exhibits, animals and especially healthy happy friends. We presented a congratulatory plaque from Tenji to Director Abe.
Not to be misleading, just a few miles to the north we toured entire neighborhoods that were destroyed. It appears the effects of the waves can be dramatically different given variables of the structure’s orientation and position on the coast.
“Green Seas, Blue Seas” Now Open
November 10th, 2011Recently Tenji’s frequently featured and prolific artist pal Ray Troll was in town to open a new exhibit at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. The theme of “Green Seas, Blue Seas” is the history of fishing and fishing culture in Monterey Bay. The anchovy (greenish) and the sardine (bluish) are featured characters as the title indicates, but a few dozen pieces cover all the main fish and fishermen stories over the history of the industry in the Bay. As always, there are important biological, sustainability, and cultural themes throughout the exhibit, as well as no lack of the inimitable Troll humor.
Ray also wrote an original limerick for each piece and Tenji got an opportunity to offer a little bit of pre-production wording suggestions (we discovered that limericks are hard to write!).
If you are in the area, check it out. It runs through January 29th, 2012, and the Pacific Grove Museum admission is free!
