Animals and high architecture. It’s a combination that could easily end in disaster – but not in the case of the Montreal Biodome.

Seven years ago, the agency Space for Life began the process to renovate the popular botanical garden and zoo, set inside the convex shell of the velodrome from the 1976 Olympics. The key: They conducted a design competition, which put the project in the hands of a young local architecture firm, Kanva.

The $37-million renovation of the Biodome, completed last year, has turned out to be one of Canada’s greatest design projects of the past decade. Kanva and their colleagues managed the complexities of zoology, geometry, climate control, construction cost overruns and a pandemic.

As you enter the facility, you’re transported into a zone of total calm. Light falls through skylights in the building’s tortoise-like concrete roof; tilted arcs of white fabric curve into the distance. Before you can encounter nature, your senses have been reset by a moment of architectural bliss.

For the lead architects, the job was preposterously complex. It involved working around some of the institution’s aquatic habitat, while rethinking the experience and movement pattern of visitors. Kanva, led by Tudor Radulescu and Rami Bebawi, have an office of about a dozen people who have developed a strong reputation with housing and small public buildings. But the Biodome was different.

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