HAPPY HOMECOMING
Perhaps the biggest challenge has been the ‘migration’ of all facility’s creatures
A Northern Rockhopper penguin enjoys the comforts of his renovated home at the Biodôme on Thursday. Closed for two years, the facility underwent a $37M facelift and will reopen to the public on Aug. 31. T’cha Dunlevy has all the colourful details.
Renovations are rough at the best of times, and moving is a nightmare. But the various inhabitants of Montreal’s Biodôme were settling into their dramatically revamped old digs quite nicely, Thursday morning.
The penguins were hopping. Turtles were taking a dip, ducks a deep dive. Large, mystical sturgeon glided through the depths of an aquarium alongside an array of other peacefully cohabitating ocean denizens, big and small.
A lynx was chilling; a colourful crew of macaws — newcomers to Montreal — socialized. Some pintsized monkeys lurked on shady tree branches, while a black vulture gave this reporter the stink eye.
After a two-year, $37-million overhaul that doubled the original estimate of $19 million, the Biodôme is back.
Located in the former Vélodrome, inside the Olympic Park, the striking edifice — a cross between a UFO and an armadillo, designed by Paris-based architect Roger Taillibert — looks the same from the outside, but has been completely reimagined within.
“This is an emblematic place that is important for Montreal,” Mayor Valérie Plante said. “I’m very happy to see how the renovation highlights this wonderful building. It reminds us of the Olympic Games, and the transformation (in 1992) of the Vélodrome into the Biodôme.”
Once inside, visitors are greeted by an organic convergence of imposing white walls, which bend and lean playfully — evoking the forms of the stunning steel sculptures of American artist Richard Serra — leading to a luminescent atrium from which any of the Biodôme’s five intuitively reimagined worlds can be accessed.
Rami Bebawi of the firm Kanva,
lead architect on the project, calls the wall “a dramatic skin, that still has this delicacy to it, that accompanies us, rising up to 15 metres, and having half a kilometre in length. It’s a technical innovation that truly was a challenge to put together.”
The wall also has what he describes as “a poetic sphere ... (eliciting) a curve of emotion for the visitors as they go through the building.”
The pièce de résistance — and Plante’s favourite — is a new network of elevated walkways, letting people look down on the Biodôme’s five environments from above the treetops.
“They’re majestic,” the mayor said, “allowing us to have a bird’seye view of these ecosystems that we usually see (from ground level). And we also get to see the beauty of the building.”
Another nifty feature is a tunnel of ice leading to the Sub-polar Regions, which demanded no shortage of logistical wizardry from the Biodôme’s team of experts, which also included electro-mechanical firm Bouthillette Parizeau and structural engineering company NCK Inc.
But perhaps the biggest challenge was the “migration” of all the Biodôme’s creatures during the work, making sure they were comfortable, content, and that they adapted to their temporary locales, and to their utterly transformed old home upon their return. (Several new species will join the Biodôme community in coming months.)
Other innovations include a new smartphone app, replacing ye olde wall texts, to accompany and inform visitors as they navigate the space.
For Charles Mathieu-brunelle, director of Espace pour la vie — the museum complex comprising the Biodôme, Botanical Gardens, Insectarium and the Planetarium — the project involved a convergence of science and nature that highlights the Biodôme’s essential mission.
“To penetrate the new Biodôme is breathtaking,” he said, “reminding us, each instant, that we’re inside an artwork, and forcing us to ask questions. Why recreate nature in a closed space? What’s our place in nature? And, more fundamentally, what place do we have left for nature in our lives?”
This is an emblematic place that is important for Montreal. I’m very happy to see how the renovation highlights this wonderful building.