The designers of Georgia Aquarium’s new US$110m dolphin expansion project have won a Best Cultural Project award, despite the fact its opening has been delayed until next year.

PGAV Destinations, which is the architect and exhibit designer for the 84,000sq ft project, was honoured by Southeast Construction Magazine, but the opening date has been moved from mid-November to sometime in 2011.

The new exhibit will boast a 1.3 million-gallon tank for trained bottlenose dolphins. The expansion, located on the west side of the present Aquarium building in downtown Atlanta, will house dolphin encounters, viewing windows and dolphin shows.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the dolphins are not quite ready. The newspaper quoted the aquarium’s president and chief operating officer, David Kimmel, as saying: “Some of our animals have come in a little later than expected due to permits, so we started our heavy training more than two months later than we expected.

“We had to go through acclimation periods, and it’s taking them a little longer to learn their behaviors.”