Comprising a three-dimensional landscape of 354 stacked concrete "boxes", Habitat modern furniture 6

Brutalism: next up in our series on Brutalist architecture is Habitat 67, the experimental modular housing presented modern furniture by Moshe Safdie at the 1967 World Expo in Montreal as a vision for the future of cities (+ slideshow).
Comprising a three-dimensional landscape of 354 stacked concrete "boxes", Habitat modern furniture 67 pioneered the combination of two major housing typologies the urban garden residence modern furniture and the modular high-rise apartment building. Photograph by Timothy Hursley, as main image
Two years later, when the architect was just 23 and starting out his career in the office of Louis Kahn , his former tutor Sandy Van Ginkel suggested he submit his design modern furniture for the Montreal Expo. It became his first ever built project.
The original masterplan modern furniture involved over 1,000 residences, alongside shops and a school. This was scaled down to just 158 homes, forming a 12-storey complex located beside the Saint Lawrence River in the centre of the city.
By utilising modern furniture a variety of geometric arrangements, making use of both setbacks modern furniture and voids, Safdie aimed to create a series of properties with their own identities. Each one featured its own roof garden and could be accessed from an external "street" one of Brutalism's key ideals. Photograph by Sam Tata
"I think Habitat was important at its time and resonated with the public because it proposed in realised form an alternative to the typology of the conventional apartment house," the architect told Dezeen.
"The public recognised in Habitat the possibility that high-rise living could be more like living in a village and have the quality modern furniture of life of a house than what they associated with the negatives modern furniture of apartment housing. While there were many theoretical proposals floating in the air at the time, the fact that we had the opportunity to realise modern furniture Habitat, modern furniture and for 50 million people to experience it during Expo as a real and living environment, suggested that this was a possible future reality." Photograph by Studio Graetz
Six monumental elevator pillars were added to offer vertical access, stopping only on every fourth level to try and prevent unnecessary journeys modern furniture and thus decrease the structure's energy consumption. Photograph by Studio Graetz
To allow the prefabricated construction process to take place on site, a factory was built beside the site to produce the concrete modules, which were to be connected by high-tension rods, steel cables and welding.
Safdie believed this to be the most cost-efficient solution a decision that ultimately backfired with costs spiralling to CAD$22 million, which represented about CAD$140,000 per home. Photograph courtesy of Safdie Architects
Despite this, the project has remained popular with residents. In 1986 the building was sold to its tenants for CAD$11.5 million or around CAD$26,250 per residence by a Quebec businessman, who had bought it from the government for CAD$10 million.
"Everybody knows that Habitat was a money-losing proposition," modern furniture Fritz Delphine, special projects coordinator for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the agency that ran Habitat, told the New York Times . The newspaper reported that the design of the units, modern furniture each with several exposed walls, made the building twice as costly to heat as any other building in Montreal.
"A built fragment of a grander, mixed-use proposal, Habitat's concrete rawness speaks to Brutalism's beton brut raw concrete origin, but defies its massive modern furniture image with a three-dimensional burst of individual module homes," said architect Wendy Kohn, a former colleague of Safdie.
"Unlike Kahn or Corb's elemental, powerful Brutalist monuments, Safdie's Habitat suggests a spontaneous orchestration. Economics and luck dictated modern furniture its singularity, but Safdie s subsequent designs for desert, tropical, and compact urban Habitats around the world suggest its aspiration to multiply, adapt, and mutate, rather than stand rooted."
"Habitat constitutes an urban vision of building economically but humanely, modern furniture expressing individuality, but committed to solving enduring communal needs," she said. Sketch by Moshe Safdie click for larger image
After the expo, the architect was commissioned to replicate the design in various locations around the world, from New York to Puerto Rico and Israel, although none of these were ever realised. Section click for larger image Module assembly diagram click for larger image Unit typologies click for larger image Related story: Brutalist buildings: Park Hill, Sheffield by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith
Brutalism: to kick off a series of building studies looking back at classic Brutalist buildings from around the world, we revisit Park Hill the housing modern furniture estate that brought "streets in the sky" to Sheffield, England, after the Second World War. More »
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