Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan

This guide to Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan starts on an escalator ride to the eighth floor of a building banded in blue and red, then follows a slow, five-hundred-meter walk downward around one central tank. It traces architect Peter Chermayeff's late-1980s design, built on scientist James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis and the idea that the Pacific's ring of volcanoes traces the same line as its richest concentration of marine life. You'll hear why he chose one continuous spiral over a row of separate tanks. Stand close to the glass as the path opens onto the pool's lowest level.