In a wonderful example of how to reuse Olympic venues, the city of Montreal converted the velodrome from the 1976 Olympics into an indoor zoo, with five distinct ecosystems, plenty of sunlight and vegetation, and animals from all over. Juergen Horn and Mike Powell visited recently to enjoy the environment and take pictures.
Dwarfed by the Olympic Stadium to which it’s adjacent, the Biodôme doesn’t look like much from the outside. But inside, an illusion of immense space has been created, and each of the five ecosystems are surprisingly spacious. After leaving the Biodôme, I looked back on the building in confusion. How did they manage to fit everything into that cycling dome?
The five zones are Tropical Rainforests, Laurentian Maple Forests, Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Labrador Cliffs, and the Antarctic. See more of the Biodôme at For 91 Days.