Moshe Safdie?s iconic Canadian complex makes a comeback One luminous June evening I wander drunkenly around Habitat ?67, the world-famous Montreal housing complex that, half a century ago, was going to change the world. I?m attending a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of Habitat, a piece of the momentous Expo ?67 World?s Fair that lured tens of millions of visitors to Montreal with its upbeat vision of the future. The city has been commemorating the fair this year with a whole slate of exhibitions and events, but this particular gathering is mainly for the residents of the complex, an instantly recognizable, somewhat haphazard-looking pile of 354 prefabricated concrete boxes. The highlight is an appearance by the development?s architect, Moshe Safdie, now 79, who is presented with a medal by a government minister and anointed an officer of the Quebec National Order.
Habitat ?67 was the Guggenheim Bilbao of its day, hugely famous and widely regarded as the shape of things to come. Located far from the center of Montreal on Cité du Havre, a man-made peninsula in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, and convenient only to the former Expo grounds, Habitat is a jumbo pile of concrete boxes stacked asymmetrically and held together by poured-in-place structural elements. Instead of a conventional lobby or landscaped grounds, Habitat has an underside, a long, windswept, concrete cavern that is, apparently, inhabited by thousands of birds. When I walk through it, on...