Repurposed Silos in St. Jacobs

Habitat 67, Montreal

This is Moshe Safdie's design project for Expo '67; a housing complex along the St. Laurent River on Avenue Pierre Dupuy. I biked from Montreal to St. Helen's Island to my last destination, Buckminister Fuller's geodesic (next entry). Habitat '67 was conveniently located on the way. 

I took the picture above from across the river. The complex looks like it is in ruins from afar. But on a close inspection, it looks very nice.  

Seeing this pile of concrete up close was great. 

Looks like there was reno happening at the time as can be seen in the picture below. (The pictures were taken August 2011.) 

Surely, given a chance to live in a unit like the above, I definitely would take it in a heart beat! But when I look at the building as a piece of architecture, I have my reservations. Is this a housing complex or a monument for the idea of a housing complex? It could work as the later: it is more expressive than utilitarian. (The imagination it took to design this is amazing.) But the question is, why does "housing" need such an extravagant expression and monumental representation?

Here is an excerpt I found in a book: "It[Mass housing] merely an emergency measure which was seized upon when the normal process fell short. It was a means which was useful when a large number of people had to be housed in a short space of time....But our problem began when this emergency measure from the turn of the century grew into housing for the entire community, and thus became the norm". 

I add this: our problem got worse, when we started building  extravagant monuments for it.