In the 1960s, the Quebec government decided to take a chance and allow 25-year-old McGill University student Moshe Safdie to build a concrete apartment complex facing Montreal’s Old Port. At the time, he hadn’t built anything.
But the risk paid off, as this modular masterpiece, Habitat67, is a historic monument of Brutalist architecture. The blocky, Lego-like building stacks 354 concrete blocks housing 146 residences overlooking the Saint Lawrence River. The project put Montreal on the map as a forward-thinking design city in a time when Canadian design veered towards the blanc.
“In the early parts of my career, I was quite obsessed with geometry and with the notion of creating three-dimensional spatial components as building blocks for construction,” says the Israeli-Canadian architect. “Habitat is an example where boxes form houses.”
Famed for hosting Expo67, the 1967 International and Universal Exposition, the building recently underwent a full restoration to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2017. Now it has reopened its doors to host public with tours and is being turned into a venue for scholarly research on design and architecture.
The main prompt for the renovation was water damage, which has lasted for decades. But the two-year project helped fix the damage by stripping the exterior concrete walls, insulating and waterproofing them to sustain Quebec’s chilly -20 °F winters.
The retro charm of this architectural masterpiece has been sustained throughout; the wooden parquet flooring has been restored to its original glory, energy-efficient windows have been built in, and sliding patio doors retract into the walls. But there are changes: Polycarbonate railings grace the apartment terraces, kitchen cabinets have been renewed, and the bathrooms boast energy-efficient fittings.
Tours of the space are led by well-versed historians like Kathleen Bouvier, a former resident of Habitat67 who lived on-site for seven years, and Julie Bélanger, an Expo67 historian who can detail what went on within these concrete walls. The 90-minute tours take guests through a residential unit and its walkways, streets, and terraces, and are available from May through October.
This historical masterpiece may be a step back into retro Brutalism, but it also sheds a light on where we are headed in the future of architecture. For Safdie’s 1980 book Form and Purpose, he wrote a poem detailing his design philosophy. “What I wrote then seems relevant today,” he says: “He who seeks truth shall find beauty.”
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