Harbor Wetland

National Aquarium is bringing back the wetland ecosystem that used to exist here in the Baltimore Harbor with a 10,000 square foot human-made floating wetland. It provides homes for wildlife, helps clean the water, and creates a new, free, public green space in the heart of the city.

I led the development of the exhibition components on the floating dock, where we focused on three big questions: why build a wetland here, how does it work, and what should the future of the harbor be?

National Aquarium

New permanent outdoor exhibition

July 2024 - present

Roles: interpretive planning/exhibition development; coordination of artist collaborations; evaluation coordination

Big Idea

This floating wetland habitat helps improve the Inner Harbor's health and resiliency, building a cleaner, greener future.

Selected Goals

Create a welcoming, accessible, and engaging public space where Baltimore residents and visitors alike can connect with each other and the natural world here, in the heart of the city
Nurture a sense of regional pride and hopeful attitudes toward a healthy, sustainable future by demonstrating how we can all work together to improve the wellbeing of the Inner Harbor and the watersheds that link all life
Explore and evaluate interdisciplinary techniques that encourage guests to experience the harbor in unexpected ways.

How can visitors engage with the invisible?

Change over time, the wetland's inner workings, water quality data--much of our content is complex and hard to imagine. We used a variety of techniques to make the content more approachable:

tactile sculptures that show changing landscapes and reveal how the wetland works
vibrant illustrations that allow you to compare four different time periods from the points of view of a fish and a bird
a sound installation by local composers, part of which changes every day as it draws on water quality data in real time to reflect the harbor's health
illustrations by three local artists that reveal their visions for the harbor's next era

Project Page