Montreal Biosphère
Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome — built for the 1967 World's Fair as the US pavilion — now holds an environment museum on a Montreal island.
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Fuller and Shoji Sadao designed the dome's geodesic exterior for Expo 67, where visitors rode a 41-metre escalator — reported then as the world's longest unsupported — to reach platforms where NASA spacecraft hung from the steel frame. The structure now houses an environment museum within Parc Jean-Drapeau on Saint Helen's Island.
What to look for
- The geodesic dome's lattice exterior — Fuller designed it with Shoji Sadao and Geometrics Inc., while Cambridge Seven Associates handled the interior structures
- The dome's steel frame, from which Freedom 7, Gemini 7, and Apollo AS-202 capsules once hung during Expo 67
- The Saint Helen's Island setting within Parc Jean-Drapeau, the original Expo 67 grounds
Located on Saint Helen's Island within Parc Jean-Drapeau, Montreal.
Montreal Biosphère is one of 14 sights worth the detour in Montreal, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Montreal pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Montreal
- Circuit Gilles VilleneuveThe track where Gilles Villeneuve beat the world on home soil in 1978 — and it now carries his name.
- Olympic StadiumThe stadium that cost so much, Montreal renamed it "The Big Owe."
- Bell CentreCanada's largest indoor arena holds 20,962 people — and on a Canadiens night, the noise travels several city blocks.
- Habitat 67A McGill thesis project that actually got built — 354 prefabricated concrete boxes stacked into homes on the Saint Lawrence for a 1967 World's Fair.
- Notre-Dame BasilicaDeep blue vaults scattered with gold stars, and a 7,000-pipe organ that fills every corner of it.
- Montreal Museum of Fine ArtsCanada's oldest art museum, founded in 1860, now sprawls across five pavilions and draws more visitors than any other art museum in the country.