Sitting near a body of water and watching it can be a very relaxing experience. Normally you will need to travel to the seafront or a river front to enjoy the experience. But Okeanos Aquascaping, a New York–based builder of custom ponds and aquariums founded in 2002 has developed some of the world’s most imaginative underwater ecosystems right in your backyard. Martin Schapira and his business partner Nathan Kamelhar have together taken the business to new heights. Just last year Okeanos Aquascaping created a series of tanks for French artist Pierre Huyghe’s exhibit at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Manhattan.
The anemone filled tanks were misty and were designed to represent human emotions like love or melancholy. Shapira himself is an avid fish watcher. He enjoys the experience whether it is while snorkeling and diving or going to an aquarium. However, he feels that sitting on a sofa at home and watching a fish tank doesn’t have the same impact. The experts at Okeanos have been working on creating an underwater world that could provide an interactive experience with the fish in the aquarium.
The project has been taken up with the support of Robb Report and Okeanos will create the magical underwater world as a gift for one of the Robb Report readers. At $11 million it could easily qualify as most expensive gift, more so as most expensive Christmas gift. It will have a fresh water swimming pool of 30 feet by 60 feet dimension with depths of up to 10 feet. There will be two commercial-aquarium-grade acrylic walls that will separate a 50,000 gallon saltwater aquarium. The L shaped aquarium will have a depth of 25 feet and will run from below the swimming pool bottom to 15 feet above it. The elaborate aquarium will provide both indoor and outdoor viewing areas. The project has been undertaken by the company’s new division, Okeanos Swim.
Via: robbreport
