educational mission.” The Biodôme was originally designed as the velodrome for the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976 by architect Roger Taillibert. In 1992, the building metamorphosed into a natural science museum that included four ecosystems: the Tropical Rainforest, the Laurentian maple Forest, the St. Lawrence Gulf, and the Sub-Polar Regions. Together, these four systems host over 4,500 animals from 250 different species. In2014, aspart of a citywideplan to celebrate Montreal’s thenupcoming 375th anniversary, the museum launched an international competition to renovate the Biodôme interior. KANVA, in collaboration with NEUF architect(e)s, won that competition. Later, their design was further rewarded with a 2015 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence. KANVA’s award-winning strategy, Tudor explains, treated the existing facility as a “living organism.” It involved a “continuous curved wall fluidly wrapping each ecosystem like a skin.” Referencing the building’s history of hosting cycling races, they also designed the floor-toceiling walls to “sweep through” the interior space. Furthermore, they designed the facility to offer visitors a “multiplicity of paths” all leading to a new central hub. Those multiple paths are meant to allow for “a more intuitive discovery of the living collections,” and to encourage “free wandering, as it could be done in a natural environment.” The ‘skin-like’ continuous wall is clean and white, and serves as an intermediary between the building and the exhibition zones. Whereas NOVEMBER 2022
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