The two principals, Peter Chermayeff, son of architect
Serge Chermayeff, and Bobby C. Poole, have collaborated on the design of public aquariums since 1975. Their long partnership, with focus on the design of public aquariums, began in 1975 when Bobby Poole joined
Cambridge Seven Associates (C7A), which had been founded in 1962 by Peter Chermayeff together with Louis Bakanowsky,
Ivan Chermayeff, Alden Christie, Paul Dietrich,
Tom Geismar, and Terry Rankine. The firm's first major commission was the
New England Aquarium, which opened in 1969. Peter Chermayeff was the principal in charge and he himself put each fish, including a
sand tiger shark, in its main four-story 40-foot-wide Giant Ocean Tank containing 200 thousand gallons of
salt water. Peter Chermayeff played a leading role in much of the design work through the first thirty-six years of Cambridge Seven Associates, the United States Pavilion and Exhibition at
Expo '67; 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. 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. 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 sculptor
Costantino 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. ==See also==