Morocco Mall

Aquadream is a 31 foot tall (9.3 meter) acrylic aquarium designed and built in conjunction with sister company International Concept Management, Inc. (ICM), and is the centerpiece of the luxury mega-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.

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.

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 and nearly 3,000 aquatic animals representing 41 different species.