Canadian Designs: Habitat 67

At 2600 Avenue Pierre-Dupuy in Montreal, stands a rather unusual building. Out on a spit of land jutting into Montreal’s harbour, “Habitat 67” is an apartment complex with a unique Canadian past. Unveiled for the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal (Expo 67), Habitat 67 was the brainchild of a McGill University architecture grad student, Moshe Safdie, who dreamed of a three-dimensional modular building system made of prefab modules that would combine two seemingly-incompatible housing models – that of the suburban garden home and the high-rise urban apartment building. The prefab reinforced concrete blocks were stacked across each other (some have described the style as “reminiscent of a Taos Indian pueblo village”). Due to the criss-cross arrangement, the roof of each unit serves as the garden terrace for another. 354 of the concrete boxes were used to form 158 apartments (now 146, as some of the units have been combined). [caption id="attachment_4238" align="alignleft" width="300"] Habitat 67 seen from Montreal port. Source Wikipedia[/caption] The building of the modules as prefab units, each one hoisted into place by crane, was meant to reduce cost, and there was much hope for the project originally as a model for affordable housing in the future. Expo 67 was dedicated to “Man and his World”, and the apartment complex was touted to its thousands of visitors as a model community and housing complex. It is difficult today to imagine the giddiness of the time – evidenced by a Maclean’s Magazine ad which saw a Canadian future in which “vast megalopolitan clusters of 25 to 50 million people would enjoy a universal two-day workweek, free local transportation, no pollution, and a pleasant monoclimate supplied by a huge transparent plastic membrane overhead.” The economic dream for Habitat did not unfold quite that way. Almost from the beginning, Habitat 67 drew a well-heeled clientele and was not particularly accessible to lower-income residents (either geographically or financially). The initial costs of the government project were squarely in “White Elephant” territory, and the initial unit rental (over $1000 for some units) was expensive in 1967. Today, the price of a unit starts about $500,000. Since 1985, the complex has been owned by a limited partnership of its tenants and is considered a successful co-op. Safdie himself has a penthouse suite in the building. Interestingly, the Canadian trade-mark “HABITAT” was registered by Safdie personally for “planning and designing of collective housing and community developments” but it was expunged in 1999 due to non-use. Nonetheless, the public interest in Habitat 67 has never waned. The complex continues to be one of Montreal’s premiere residences for the rich and famous and the politically well-connected. The building itself also continues to attract scholarly interest as a model of “Brutalist” architecture – and is one of Canada’s most recognizable architectural works. Further reading: “For Everyone a Garden,” The Walrus, February 2008, available at http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.02-architecture-montreal-habitat/ “The Future of Habitat,” http://cac.mcgill.ca/safdie/habitat/future.htm. “Moshe Safdie,” The Canadian Encyclopiedia, available at http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/moshe-safdie Summary by: Jennifer Jannuska