Symphony on Pier 3

Its pyramidal glass roof juts proudly into the sky, 157 ft. its splash of gaily colored panels shimmers in the sun's bright glow. As architecture, the new National Aquarium in Baltimore is striking; as a scientific and educational showcase, it already ranks among the nation's best.

Perched on Pier 3 at the eastern end of the harbor, the aquarium--city-owned and built without federal funds--was begun in 1976. Although Congress did not contribute funds for its construction, it nevertheless designated the rising structure a national aquarium in 1979. By July its three huge tanks were filled with almost 500,000 gal. of salt water (most of it synthetic, since the genuine briny from the Inner Harbor does not have enough salt to sustain many marine creatures) and were ready to receive the first of some 5,000 fish, mammals, birds and amphibians that the aquarium now contains. A hoped-for completion date of July 4 was not met, but last week, amid fish-shaped kites, an appearance by Roy Rogers and fireworks at night, it officially opened. Said Executive Director James Kepley, 38, a muscular, red-bearded marine biologist: "Working toward this day has been a perpetual high for 3 1/2 years."

Designed by Peter Chermayeff, 45, chief architect of Cambridge Seven Associates, the building improves upon concepts the firm used in 1970 for Boston's successful New England Aquarium. Chermayeff describes the layout as similar to a symphony, with a linear structure following an "ABA" rhythm. The exhibits constitute the A elements, or as Chermayeff puts it, "something to read, confront, evoke a response." Long escalator rides from one floor to another through a dramatically high-ceilinged central space provide the release, or B elements. The building begins with a low-key introduction to water--large, blue bubble-tubes at the entrance--and after a long, steadily mounting crescendo ends on a sort of coda of quiet contemplation: a globe, 8 ft. in diameter and cut in half, frames the exit, graphically demonstrating the fragility of the oceans in relation to the earth's huge mass. Observes Chermayeff: "Museum fatigue is a serious problem, and I did not want that to happen here."

The aquarium's orchestrated splendors include plenty to justify the quote from the late anthropologist Loren Eisely that is lettered on a plaque at the start of the exhibits: "If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." Suspended majestically over the central space is a 63-ft. skeleton of a finback whale donated by the New York State Museum in Albany, where it had been on display from the 1890s to 1978. The dolphin pool, or "tray," is visible from almost every vantage point in the building, its rippling surface broken by the frothy play of four bottle-nosed dolphins. Recorded sounds of surf, sea birds, sea lions and even snapping crustaceans can be heard on the escalator rides.

Among the exhibits are re-creations of the watery environments of coral reefs and a section of the Maine coastline (assembled, ironically, from casts of rock taken along the shore of Massachusetts). The last is sure to be a hit with schoolchildren, since they will be able to pick up and handle living tidal organisms such as horseshoe crabs, moon snails and sand dollars. The 13-ft.-high viewing windows of two gigantic "race track" tanks, one atop the other, reveal the dark worlds of an Atlantic coral reef and the deep sea. Scores of trigger fish, tiger fish, parrot fish, grunts and blow fish swim in a traffic jam of color through the coral reef. Below, sea turtles and rays settle into the simulated depths, sometimes with understandable uneasiness, as eight species of shark hover near by.

The spiritual as well as the physical apex of the aquarium is the tropical rain forest, housed in the 64-ft. glass pyramid that is the building's most distinctive feature. The rain forest illustrates the variety of environments dependent on water, and contains tall, exotic Amazonian trees, vines, shrubs, a waterfall, a stream and leafy ground cover, as well as lizards, snakes and frogs. From the visitors' platform one can take in the full glory of a complete ecosystem almost ten stories above the Inner Harbor, and at the same time view the vista of a redeveloped Baltimore embracing the horizon.

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