AOAO SAPPORO

AOAO SAPPORO occupies three floors of a shopping complex in central Sapporo, a few minutes from Odori Park, and stays open until ten at night.

The aquarium is arranged as three zones rather than a single route, and there is no fixed order to follow.

“Connect”, on the lowest of the three floors, puts the machinery of the aquarium on display instead of hiding it. Two plants manufacture artificial seawater – one for the fish, one for the penguins – and staff top them up with salt daily to supply the tanks throughout the building. A second area shows the holding tanks used for health checks and the preparation of food for the animals, with the work visible as it happens. The museum shop shares this floor and sits outside the ticket barrier.

“Scope” is about looking at familiar creatures from unfamiliar angles. Its centrepiece is a Nature Aquarium, a style of planted freshwater tank associated with wabi-sabi aesthetics and the aesthetics of Zen; the permanent installation here is one of only three in the world, after Tokyo and Lisbon. Four planted scenes sit in a quiet Japanese-style room, each one a small functioning ecosystem rather than a decorated tank. Nearby, the Library Aquarium arranges forty-three tanks of varying sizes as though they were shelves, each labelled with things to look for and paired with books about the animals in them.

“Commons” is the floor most visitors will recognise as an aquarium. Northern rockhopper penguins, which move by hopping with both feet together, live in an enclosure built from hexagonal blocks that can be rearranged to change the shape of the land area – a system described as the first of its kind anywhere. The Plankton Room holds sixteen tanks of drifting animals, moon jellyfish among them, pulsing slowly in a darkened space. The Blue Room projects digital art across a twenty-metre screen and onto around 120 square metres of floor, so that visitors stand inside the scene rather than in front of it. The Green Room is a small tropical glasshouse, with more than twenty plant species including fig trees over two metres tall, and benches to sit on.

Food and drink are allowed on every floor, which is unusual and shapes how people use the place.