Mazatlán Aquarium a Finalist for Architectural Award

Gran Acuario Mazatlán, the $99.3 million (USD) aquarium dedicated to the Sea of Cortez and unveiled in 2023, is a finalist for the Americas Prize “New Architecture in a New World” award this year. This prestigious biennial prize, presented by the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture in Chicago, recognizes excellence in works of architecture in the Americas.  

Set within Mazatlán's 75-acre Central Park, the 26,000-square-meter aquarium is the largest aquarium in Mexico and the most prominent in Latin America. The facility’s extraordinary collection of wildlife is drawn exclusively from marine ecosystems in the Sea of Cortez. Focused on the preservation of seas and coastlines, Gran Acuario Mazatlán combines unrivaled architecture, majestic exhibits, and state-of-the-art conservation technology.

The Americas Prize award would honor Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, the aquarium’s designer. Her works often merge geometry with nature. For example, visitors descend the multi-level facility from sea level, where sea mammals dwell, to successively lower depths, where the species on display are appropriate to each depth level.

Outside, indigenous plants and flowering vines hang from towering concrete walls, enhancing the building’s appearance as a long-forgotten, ancient ruin. “It’s a place where the sea and terrestrial nature encounter architecture and the human world,” Bilbao Estudio explained.

Highlights of the three-story aquarium include colossal fish and coral tanks, four interior courtyards, a 240-person auditorium, and nearly 20 interactive exhibit spaces, including one dedicated to Jacques Cousteau, the late French oceanographer who described the Sea of Cortez as “the aquarium of the world” in the 1960s. The aquarium is staffed with knowledgeable guides, many of them bilingual. 

Among the marine animals on display, all native to the Sea of Cortez, are 36 species of mammals (including sea lions), 31 cetaceans (including dolphins and other aquatic mammals), five of the seven global species of sea turtles, 12 species of corals and jellyfish, more than 100 species of fish (including sharks), plus seahorses and manta rays.

The aquarium has already become a leading scientific research center, with resources dedicated to the study of marine life and ecosystems, climate change and ocean health. (A portion of the facility’s revenue has been pledged to preserve biodiversity in the Sea of Cortez). The aquarium also functions as a family-friendly educational hub, delighting and inspiring the next generation of marine biologists and oceanographers with immersive shows and thought-provoking exhibits.

According to the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture, the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) defines excellence in a holistic sense: it evaluates how works of architecture integrate natural, built and human ecologies to enhance the quality of the places where people live.

The works MCHAP celebrates inspire, educate and challenge their users, the international design community and the wider public. With sensitivity and intelligence, these projects achieve a formal, material, social and environmental synergy. They realize opportunities for architecture--understood through both what architecture is, as a physical structure, and what it does in the experiences and connections it creates.

The prize is a platform that brings nominators, jury members, students, faculty, practitioners, and clients into an essential dialogue about what architecture makes possible. The result is a rich array of engaging events and symposia, inventive studios and workshops, and sophisticated, globally recognized publications.

Plan your next Mazatlán visit today!