National Aquarium Unveils Harbor Wetland: A New Eco-Friendly Habitat and Free Exhibit in Baltimore's Inner Harbor

The National Aquarium has an ambitious mission to inspire the conservation of the world’s aquatic treasures. With a prime location in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and a goal of transforming its campus into a Chesapeake Bay demonstration landscape, the aquarium worked with Ayers Saint Gross to produce a sustainable and high-performing floating wetland to expand the habitat on its campus.

The Harbor Wetland has opened at the National Aquarium campus as a free exhibit. The 10,000-square-foot (930 sq.m) habitat will allow visitors to immerse themselves in a salt marsh habitat like those that existed in this space hundreds of years ago. The wetland, situated between Piers 3 and 4 on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, features more than 32,000 native shrubs and marsh grasses and is based upon sustainable innovations developed by the Aquarium’s conservation and exhibit fabrication teams.

The Harbor Wetland project was born from an earlier Waterfront Campus Plan, also completed by Ayers Saint Gross. That project led to the design of a Floating Wetland Prototype, on which Ayers Saint Gross worked with the National Aquarium and Biohabitats, McLaren Engineering Group, and Kovacs, Whitney & Associates in continuation of Studio Gang’s EcoSlip concept. The knowledge gained from years of studying and refining the prototype became the basis for the design process of the implementation of the full-scale Harbor Wetland.

The learning dock acts as a new civic anchor in the Inner Harbor, drawing visitors in to experience the wildlife that fills the harbor. In addition to being a social space, the wetland utilizes over 30,000 grasses and shrubs combined with water aeration technology. Once the plants mature, the exhibit will act as green infrastructure to promote healthy, clean waters, attract native species, and provide a variety of habitats to support a strong ecosystem.

The project provides a free outdoor exhibit where the National Aquarium can educate the public and study the harbor. The innovative construction ensures that this investment will far outlast conventional floating wetlands and become a landmark in the Inner Harbor.