Habitat 67

Moshe Safdie designed Habitat 67 out of his McGill master’s thesis and built it as a pavilion for Expo 67 on the Cité du Havre peninsula, stacking 354 prefabricated concrete boxes into a terraced block of apartments. The premise was that prefabrication could deliver density without giving up what people want from a house, meaning private outdoor space, light on several sides and your own front door, with every roof doubling as a neighbour’s garden. The economics never scaled and the model was never repeated, which is part of why it still looks like nothing else here. The units are privately owned, but guided tours run on a seasonal schedule and cover the footbridges, pedestrian streets and suspended terraces before going inside Safdie’s own apartment. Tickets are sold online in advance only, and the stairs make it a poor fit for limited mobility.