In 1967, in Montreal, Canada erected a block of apartments that looked more like a gigantic LEGO than a classic building: Habitat 67. Stacked in tiers, its concrete cubes promised each family light, view and hanging garden, while remaining dense. Fifty years later, this prototype still fascinates, while the technical teams juggle with its structural weaknesses.
Originally, architecture student Moshe Safdie wanted to invent a third way between an HLM bar and a suburban house. Its slogan was “For everyone a garden”: a garden for everyone, even in the city. But transposing plastic bricks into 90-ton concrete modules created a system so complex that no one knows how to repair it at a reasonable cost.
Habitat 67: how did these “LEGO houses” want to reinvent the city?
To design Habitat, Moshe Safdie “used thousands of Lego pieces to test the way in which the housing modules could fit together in three dimensions”, he said later, quoted by Jeuxvideo.com. Each concrete box was poured in a factory installed on the site, already equipped with a kitchen, fiberglass bathroom and technical networks before being hoisted by crane.
The complex thus aligns 354 prefabricated modules on 12 floors, for 158 apartments connected by elevated pedestrian streets. However, the initial project aimed for nearly 1000 housing units, with a school and shops. Reduced to 158 units for budgetary reasons, it still cost around 22.4 million Canadian dollars, or around 16 million euros.