Peter Chermayeff LLC is a Massachusetts-based architectural firm which specializes in aquarium architecture and exhibit design, from conceptual planning to the details of final realization.
History
The two principals, Peter Chermayeff and Bobby C. Poole, have collaborated on the design of public aquariums since 1975. Their long collaboration, with focus on the design of public aquariums, began in 1975 when Bobby Poole joined Cambridge Seven Associates, where Peter Chermayeff was a founding principal together with Paul Dietrich, Terry Rankine, Louis Bakanowsky, Alden Christie, Ivan Chermayeff, and Tom Geismar. The first project for the seven founding principals was the New England Aquarium, of which Peter Chermayeff was the principal in charge. It opened in 1969. The man himself put each fish in the giant tank which is made up of 200 thousand gallon of water. Including the sand tiger shark in the tank. The first thirty six years of design work at Cambridge Seven Associates, in much of which Peter Chermayeff played a leading role, included the modernization of the Boston Transportation system, the MBTA, now known as the T, the United States Pavilion and Exhibition at Expo '67, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the San Antonio Museum of Art, Charles Square, a hotel, retail, housing and office complex in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “Where’s Boston?”, a mixed media celebration and portrait of Boston for the United States Bicentennial, the Osaka Aquarium, the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, and the Aquarium of Genoa. These and other projects led to C7A receiving the Architecture Firm of the Year award in 1993 from the AIA. Bobby Poole joined C7A in 1976 to work with Peter Chermayeff on the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Poole became the Aquarium’s Project Architect. He led the preparation of final design documents, the on-site overview of construction and installation, and became a principal in 1986. He further developed his interest in aquariums working with Peter Chermayeff on the Osaka Aquarium, the Tennessee Aquarium, the Aquarium of Genoa, the Lisbon Oceanarium, and the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, Alaska. They also collaborated on unbuilt aquariums and rainforest pavilions proposed by Chermayeff while at C7A for Moscow, Russia, for Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Oberhausen in Germany, and for Tsuruhama, Osaka, in Japan. Peter Chermayeff and Bobby Poole continued their close collaboration until 2005 with Peter Sollogub under the firm name Chermayeff, Sollogub and Poole, Inc., until 2009 under the firm name Chermayeff & Poole, Inc., and since that year as Peter Chermayeff LLC. Recent completed projects have included the expansion of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, and the expansion of the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, both of which opened in 2005. Expansion of the Museo Nivola in Orani, Sardinia, a second component of a museum dedicated to the sculptorCostantino Nivola, was completed in 2005. The remodeling and expansion of the Virginia Aquarium at Virginia Beach, Virginia, was completed in 2009. Recent unbuilt projects have included a proposed Aquarium and Environmental Center for Alexandria, Egypt, the New Songdo Ecotarium in Incheon, near Seoul, South Korea, and the proposed remodeling and expansion of Nausicaä Centre National de la Mer in Boulogne Sur Mer, France. A recent proposed Aquarium was to be the core attraction within the proposed Parco del Mare in Trieste, Italy. A current project is the expansion of the Lisbon Oceanarium.
