NEW YORK—It was 1997, and Jon Forrest Dohlin had one final assignment to complete for his graduate program at Parsons University before hitting the real world as an architect: design a new exhibit at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium.
“Like most people in New York, I had no idea we had an aquarium,” Dohlin said with a laugh.
The design studio project called for the students to work on every aspect of the design, apart from building it. By semester’s end, Dohlin submitted his project: “I created a ‘Swim with the Shark’ exhibit that sat on the boardwalk so people could swim through the middle of it with sharks all around.”
Fifteen years later, Dohlin is very familiar with the New York Aquarium—he has been the director since 2008—and in October, the aquarium will break ground on the new “Ocean Wonders: Sharks!” exhibit. The new exhibit is not on the boardwalk, but it will allow visitors to walk (not swim) through a tunnel and view sharks in a new interactive way.
Although the design for the new exhibit was not based off Dohlin’s graduate school plans, he said he still has them.
