The Montreal Biodome: From Olympic Velodrome to a Space for Life

The history of the Olympic Games, while marked by athletic achievement, is consistently contrasted by infrastructure challenges. Across host cities, from Athens to Rio and Beijing, similar issues arise: significant cost overruns and the complex issue of legacy. The big question is: What is the best viable long-term use for purpose-built sport venues? Montreal's 1976 Games shared this fate after building an Olympic Park that faced heavy criticism for cost overruns and debt from specialized construction. Post-Games, venues like the Montreal Velodrome risked becoming a financial burden. However, the city demonstrated a proactive response by proposing the transformation of the building into a thriving civic asset that now stands as an internationally recognized example of successful Olympic venue repurposing.

The San Carlos de Apoquindo Stadium (currently Claro Arena), inaugurated on September 4, 1988, is located in the Las Condes municipality of Santiago, Chile, on a sloping site towards the city, between the mountains and Manquehue Hill. The original design featured a partially buried configuration, with differentiated access points between the eastern side (Fouilloux) and the western side (Livingstone).

The Limbo Museum is a new institution dedicated to architecture, art, and design based in Ghana, West Africa. The museum challenges the concept of the ruin, operating from a formerly abandoned Brutalist estate that currently conveys the image of an unfinished building. The project was founded by Limbo Accra, a spatial design and research-based practice established in 2018 by Dominique Petit-Frère and Emil Grip, dedicated to "unlocking the potential of unfinished buildings across West Africa and beyond." On October 31, 2025, the museum opened its first public exhibition, On the Other Side of Languish by Reginald Sylvester II, developed through the institution's visiting artist residency program.

The Bale Bio Pavilion reinterprets the Bale Banjar, the open-sided meeting hall that anchors every Balinese village. Raised off the ground and open to the air, the Bale Banjar has long been a space for ceremony, music, and community discussion. At Mertasari Beach in Sanur, Cave Urban translated this familiar form into a lightweight pavilion built from bamboo and recycled materials, merging local typology with regenerative design principles. "We were really interested in the Bale Banjar," says Jed Long, Director at Cave Urban. "It's a space that everyone in Bali recognises, a structure that connects people and community."