Shedd Aquarium Renovation (Experience Evolution), Chicago

The Shedd Aquarium renovation in Chicago is rebuilding the inside of a 1930 Beaux-Arts landmark while more than 25,000 animals and the paying public stay in the building. The aquarium calls the work its Experience Evolution. It accounts for about half of a $500 million Centennial Commitment that runs to the institution’s 100th birthday in 2030.

Four pieces are open: the Welcome Plaza and gardens, the Wonder of Water habitats in the rotunda, a refreshed Amazon Rising, and new aquatic science labs with an animal hospital. The biggest gallery isn’t. Changing Oceans was scheduled for summer 2026. Shedd’s website now says early 2027.

Project Scope

Valerio Dewalt Train is the architect. Pepper/BMI Construction, a joint venture, is general contractor, and JLL is project manager. Thinc Design leads exhibit design, with the Institute for Human Centered Design advising on accessibility. The architect’s project page lists a long consultant bench without assigning roles, among them Thornton Tomasetti, Klein & Hoffman, V3, ESD, Site Design Group, Threshold Acoustics and Available Light.

Phase 1 ran from summer 2023 into 2024. It added an entry and ticketing pavilion, about four acres of gardens and a reworked atrium, and it replaced the rotunda’s old Caribbean reef tank with paired saltwater and freshwater habitats.

Phase 2 is the heavy lift. Changing Oceans converts the North Gallery into a 40-foot walk-through tunnel holding twice the water of the habitat it replaces, alongside a multi-story kelp forest and a whale-fall exhibit. The North Terrace, original to the building, is being extended 10 feet, and the space underneath will hold life-support systems for the new tanks. A lakeside learning studio is meant to raise annual student capacity from 180,000 to more than 230,000.

Still to come are the River Wonders and Living Lakes galleries and a restored Grand Hall. Plans also call for masonry repair and reopening original windows that had been closed off.

Why It Matters

Museum renovations are usually phased around visitors. This one is phased around animals, which can’t be sent to swing space for a season. Every tank that comes out needs a replacement habitat and a working life-support loop first. It’s why a terrace extension is really a mechanical room.

The schedule has slipped, modestly so far. The 2023 plan had the building work wrapping in 2027. With the largest gallery now opening in early 2027 and two more behind it, that date looks tight. The architect’s own project page lists an estimated completion of 2030.

Shedd set contracting targets at the start: at least 26 percent of subcontract packages to diverse vendors and half of on-site labor hours to Chicago residents. It hasn’t published results against them in anything we found.

The centennial is four years out, and the hardest gallery is still behind construction walls. The fish, at least, aren’t going anywhere.

Project Team & Details