Not random word association, Wave Cloud Tree Zoo is one of three finalists in a competition for the NY Aquarium at Coney Island. The collaboration between WRT & Cloud 9 Architecture (along with a host of others) envisions a verdant and sinuous waterfront…

:: image via Wave Cloud Tree Zoo

Here’s a project description with a bad online translation edited a bit for excessive silliness, via Cloud9: “The Aquarium exists between the people the marine environment – surrounded with haze, salt spray, the sun, and shade. The design creates a bony structure that rises from the perimeter of the Aquarium and the space forms an arch. The structure is minimal, as the structures is iconic of Coney Island. It stays lifted by pulleys of steel and is covered with a network of cables with more than 40.000 LED lights. These solar lights change color every night, according to the energy captured from the sun during the day. The network interacts with the surface of the Aquarium just as with the skin of a fish: it breathes, moves, communicates with the light and the reflexes, filters, protects and regulates the temperature. Actually, it is a series of artificial skins of tiles similar to scales; ascending green surfaces; lenticular images in movement, enormous, dynamic; sound surrounding ambience; facilities are interactive. A water system shapes waves for the whole network, creating a humid network that one likens to an Aquarium.”

I assume this is the gist – as I believe I’ve got most of the high points – the biggest being the move to make the building skin similar to fish scales, both in texture and luminesence. Cool idea. The following is a diagram of some of the materials as applied to the ‘web’ – and some vertical greenery as well.

:: images via Wave Cloud Tree Zoo