Montreal is home to Canada's largest natural science education center, Space for Life. It includes the Botanical Garden and the Biodôme Museum, in recent years the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium and the Biodiversity Center have been added to them, and by 2017, when the 375th anniversary of the city's founding, the authorities plan to completely renovate Biodôme, build an insect zoo museum Insectarium Metamorphosis and the multifunctional Glass Pavilion in the Botanical Garden. International competitions were held for the right to design these three objects.
The largest of the three projects is the reconstruction of Biodôme, which was commissioned by Alejandro Saero-Polo and his AZPML bureau following a competition. Initially, the museum building was constructed as a velodrome for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games in Montreal, but in the early 1990s, the spectacular building designed by Roger Tayyber changed its function: the first in history, as its organizers believe, a "museum of ecosystems" appeared there. It presents the landscape, flora and fauna of the rainforest, the Laurentian maple forest, the waters and shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and two subpolar zones - the coast of the Canadian region of Labrador and the subantarctic islands.
After the reconstruction, each of the ecosystems will receive a curved media wall - a shell, various parts of the museum will be connected by numerous bridges, the zone of subpolar regions will significantly expand (visitors will be able to "get closer to the penguins"), and, of course, the architecture and design of the exposition will completely change.
The Insectarium Metamorphosis Museum, designed by the Berlin bureau Kuehn Malvezzi, is a sightseeing route that runs above, underground and under water, where visitors “come face to face with insects”. Earthen walls will create the necessary atmosphere in the underground part, and glass inserts-windows will allow you to understand the operation of the building's life support systems and the actual insect enclosures. Also, Insectarium Metamorphosis provides functional premises: laboratories, greenhouses, insect nurseries, administration offices.
The Glass Pavilion, designed by Lacaton & Vassal, has the simplest program of the three competition objects: it is a multifunctional event space for 350 guests. The architects continued the theme of the environment - a rose garden is located nearby - and placed a trellis with roses between two layers of glazing of the facade, creating a kind of greenhouse. You can imagine how effective such a solution will look in a snowy winter.
The projects of all participants in the competitions can be viewed at website of the Municipal Design Bureau Montreal.
