Touring Habitat 67, Montreal’s Brutalist Icon
Published December 9th, 2024
Photography by Jennifer Bain
Strolling down Montreal’s Avenue Pierre-Dupuy towards one of the most famous Brutalist buildings in the world, I couldn’t stop gaping at the Lego-like but drearily grey-brown Habitat 67. The only things stopping me from crossing the lawn to photograph the blocky structure’s every angle were “propriété privée/private property” warning signs and tickets for a guided tour.
“I’ve been coming here very regularly for about 4-1/2 months now, so I’m very numb to this building,” guide Jacob Finch confessed. “The first time I walked in I was amazed. Now it feels like Groundhog Day every single day, so I want to hear from you. What’s your first impressions of this space? What do you like about it or what do you dislike about it? What’s your immediate reaction to it?”
Prison vibes. Cozy from afar but oppressive from inside. Unexpectedly airy. Brutalist, but in a feel-good way. Eleven of us offered thoughtful replies that bleak November day. Habitat 67, our guide quickly pointed out, comes alive in summer when the planters are full of flowers and trees and the sun shines through the concrete gaps.
Then he laid out the ground rules. This was private property. Residents would likely call security if we deviated from the approved route. We could take photos but not through windows into people’s homes. The tension mounted as we imagined what the next 90 minutes might bring.
For years, I had read about Montreal’s architectural icon with its three pyramids of 354 irregularly stacked, identical concrete boxes spanning 12 stories and forming 149 posh apartments.
The first time I saw Habitat 67 was in 2023 from the deck of Windstar’s Star Pride as it left Montreal on a trip to Boston. It reminded me of Marrakech and baffled just about everybody else. It took another year to get inside. I timed a birthday weekend getaway with one of the last guided tours of 2024, hoping my 12-year-old kid who builds fantastical Minecraft worlds would be inspired.
His first reaction? “It’s … unique,” he said politely.
Habitat 67 was the brainchild of Israel-born, Montreal-trained architect Moshe Safdie. It started out as his McGill University undergraduate thesis (“A Case for City Living”) and the innovative, modern design for a series of apartments was later brought to life when he tackled the master plan for the Expo 67 site. The theme of that world fair — Terre des Hommes/Man and His World — was inspired by an Antoine de Saint-Exupéry book.
Safdie’s residential complex was built on the St. Lawrence River on the Cité-du-Havre, an artificial peninsula facing downtown and the old port. The vision was one cube for singles, two for couples and three for families, and for residents to downsize as they aged. Once the pre-cast cubes were lifted into place, there were 159 apartments in the only Expo building that was built to be permanent.
Scores of Expo’s 50 million global visitors admired the strange building that was inspired by adobe homes in Arizona and Mexico. Visiting dignitaries stayed in it. Safdie swung a deal to keep the apartment used by Expo 67 commissioner general Pierre Dupuy.
Now 86 and living in Boston, Safdie went on to design Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands and Jewel Changi Airport, Ottawa’s National Gallery of Canada and much more. But Habitat 67 launched his career. Architectural Digest has called it a “modular masterpiece” and a “historic monument of Brutalist architecture.”
Oddly enough, Finch told us, Safdie rejects the Brutalist label and calls Habitat 67 anti-Brutalist. Brutalist architecture is a style of building design developed in the 1950s in the United Kingdom that emphasized raw, exposed concrete and bold geometric forms. The word comes from the French term “beton brut” meaning raw concrete.
Whatever you call it, Habitat 67 was privatized in 1985 when its tenants formed a limited partnership. Facing the Montreal Cruise Terminal, it now has 149 apartments as people have snapped up adjoining cubes and knocked down walls. Safdie gifted his apartment to McGill and the university collaborates with the non-profit Fondation Habitat 67 organization to preserve and maintain it.
The apartment must be used for scholarly research, exhibitions, artist-in-residence programs and public tours. More than 20,000 people have taken seasonal tours — some in French, others in English — since they launched here in 2017.
“Extravagant in its modernity, aestheticism and minimalism, Habitat 67 is praised around the world,” the tour website boasts. “It all comes together in a gigantic sculpture of futuristic interiors, links, pedestrian streets and suspended terraces, aerial spaces, skylights of different angles, large esplanades and monumental elevator pillars. Habitat 67 is an invitation to contemplation.”
For an hour and a half, we accepted that invitation.
We squeezed into tiny elevators, walked outdoors between apartments, admired terraces and even travelled silently through one area where a tour-hating resident lives. As Finch showed us vintage photos, we watched surfers in the St. Lawrence River and admired two distant buildings with Expo 67 links. Architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, once the U.S. Pavilion, now houses the Biosphère museum. Two other pavilions have become Casino de Montréal.
Stepping inside Safdie’s carefully restored former home on the 10th floor of one of the pyramids was, of course, the highlight.
“Please don’t touch anything — it’s a heritage-listed apartment,” Finch warned as we pulled big slippers over our shoes. The space was empty, the kitchen was roped off and for liability reasons we couldn’t go upstairs. But we admired the light-filled living room, heard about Expo dinner parties, saw downtown across the terrace, and avoided scuffing the original maple floors.
We marvelled at the vertical Canada Post slots that are still used for each apartment. We heard how a three-cube apartment recently sold for $1.2 million but came with staggering $3,441/month maintenance fees. We learned that most residents are now either new, young and wealthy millennials or elderly folks who got here in the early days and watched their real estate investments grow.
Still our intrepid guide freely admitted that Habitat 67 is an isolated apartment building that never realized its full potential.
Before we parted ways, Finch suggested we visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to see the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion that Safdie designed. The entrance pavilion is “probably most well known for having the most irritating staircase in all of Montreal,” he confided.
“I hate those stairs‚ they’re really poorly spaced out,” one woman gasped as I immediately earmarked a walk up and down the notorious staircase for my next visit. My son, however, has had enough of Safdie’s polarizing work.
While You’re in Montreal:
Stay: Since my son’s top request was for a hotel pool, we stayed at Courtyard Marriott Downtown, close to the train station and Old Montreal.
Eat: You don’t need to be told to eat warm bagels from Fairmount Bagel and St-Viateur Bagel, but I loved Olive + Gourmando’s brioche toast topped with homemade ricotta, honey, orange zest and Maldon sea salt. My son can vouch for the O+G grilled cheese (the kids version comes “without the terrible onions”) at this Old Montreal institution where the smashed potato salad with everything spice mix is a revelation. I also taught my son the difference between a food court and a food hall by taking him to Time Out Market Montreal in the Montreal Eaton Centre for upscale fried chicken at Climats.
Do: My son’s favourite stop was the Chinese garden at the Montreal Botanical Garden, while I loved the Montréal Insectarium with its live Mexican leafcutter ants and preserved specimens showcased in “the Dome.” After shopping at Simons and watching Wicked at Scotiabank Cinema Montreal, we caught the “Witches — Out of the Shadows” exhibition at Pointe-À-Callière (the Montréal Archaeology and History Complex). It runs until Apr. 6. Watch Habitat 67’s website, or sign up for its newsletter, for word on 2025 tours.
Jennifer Bain
After a career at daily newspapers, Jennifer began travelling the world in search of quirk in 2018. She goes wherever the story is, but has a soft spot for Canada and has been to all 10 provinces and all three territories. Jennifer has won multiple awards and written two cookbooks and three travel books. She lives in Toronto but has a vacation house on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, which some cheekily say is one of the four corners of the supposedly flat earth.