The Montreal Biosphere at night glows above the snow of Île Sainte-Hélène like a geometric planet. I photographed this remarkable legacy of Expo 67 beneath the black winter sky.
The Montreal Biosphere at night looked less like a museum and more like an illuminated planet that had quietly landed in the snow. I photographed it on Île Sainte-Hélène in Parc Jean-Drapeau, allowing the black Canadian sky to isolate its geometric silhouette.
The Biosphère began its life as the United States pavilion at Expo 67. Its visionary geodesic structure was designed by Richard Buckminster Fuller as an architectural vision of the future. The dome was originally enclosed by a transparent acrylic skin, but a fire in 1976 destroyed the outer covering. It was never replaced, leaving behind the exposed steel lattice that makes the building so distinctive today.
That history gives the title Night Beneath the Glass Dome a slightly playful meaning. The “glass” is no longer there, yet the dome still feels transparent, weightless and almost unreal. Green light travels across its network of triangles while violet illumination reveals the structures hidden inside.
When I composed this photograph, I wanted the surrounding darkness to disappear. The snow provides the only connection to the ground, while the sphere seems ready to lift away from Montréal. What remains is architecture stripped to its essential lines: part museum, part monument and part memory of a future imagined in 1967.
The glass may be gone, but the future is still glowing.
- Date
- 2026-01-01