06/04/2025
In Montréal I was able to visit Habitat 67, designed by Moshe Safdie. It’s an Icon of (late) mid century architecture that I first learned about in architecture school and it did not disappoint! I knew that it was built of modular units, stacked into a sort of mounded form, like an ancient hill town with lots of terraces and plants. I was surprised to see that the “hills” are hollow underneath and all the resulting spaces are thoughtfully designed with various terraces, benches, planting areas, etc. The underside of the structure is stepped up, has various portals to view the sky in different places, and has connecting skywalks high above adding another dimension to the space.
The apartments are several sizes with one to three bedrooms and not only do they differ horizontally but also vertically, as the smaller ones are one level and the larger ones have interior stairs linking two or three levels. All of them have private outdoor terrace spaces. The location, on a thin peninsula in the St Lawrence River, reminds me of Roosevelt Island in NYC, similarly an island in the river used to explore a new concept of city living but isolated from the adjacent “real” city. The complex was scaled back from the original 1000 units and without any shopping or school, it’s missing some of the life of a real neighborhood - although the apartments themselves seem to be very successful.
