Habitat 67 is an iconic housing complex situated on a man-made peninsula in the Saint Lawrence River. It was constructed as a prototype of the future of urban living for Montreal’s #Expo67, the theme of which was “Man and His World” (sorry ladies). It was supposed to demonstrate how urban mixity and suburban individuality could be brought together in an affordable way, but that last part crumbled under the pressure of the actual cost of construction. The modular units are now expensive condos.
Spots for the walking tour only opened up a week before we visited (on my birthday, no less), so I’m glad we made it happen AND found time for an English tour, because, while the space itself is wonderful to be in and walk through, so much about what Habitat 67 was and has become is discursive; it was meant to be and make a statement, so it helps to learn about it in a language you’re confident in.
When you read about the history of #Expo67, you learn that there was once a vision for the site to be a little more like Seattle Center: a fair ground that easily blends into the rest of the city. Except, the original vision was even more radical than that; it would be built right into the city itself.
Expo 67 was originally supposed to be within the urban core, with the planners proposing “a scheme which focuses upon the city – both as a theme and in its physical relationship to Montreal.” This came at a time when everything seemed possible, as the city was “in the throes of transformation” as one researcher put it. The metro was being build, as was the underground city. Montreal as an Expo city “in toto” seemed to be a very real possibility. But this vision was abandoned, with the mayor declaring: “A fair is for the masses and not for the thinkers. What the masses want are monuments.”
That’s the genesis of these artificial islands that, until a week or so before we arrived, weren’t even served by public transportation. As the same researcher put it, “at each stage, man would be made to withdraw from the city.”
One of the insights I gained from taking the tour of @habitat67montreal came from a question that the guide had asked us to consider as we entered the site: “think about how this place makes you feel.” A little later, he asked us to relay those feelings. I said that I was surprised by how “warm” the place felt, when I’d expected all that concrete to feel “cold.” Others shared other affects evoked by the space: “futuristic,” “peaceful” – one person noted that it felt a lot emptier than he’d expected.
Our guide shared that all these contrasts and contradictions were common and, indeed, integral to the design; it’s a space that evokes strong emotions, both positive and negative and often times both at the same time. Habitat 67 combines both practicalities and inconveniences (also by design), like elevators that only go to certain floors so that residents would have to meet their neighbors. It’s a dream (“a fairy tale,” according to the man who designed it) and a promise deferred.
Is it any surprise that this whole thing came out of an architect’s grad school thesis? His brashness at such a young age was brought up a number of times.
As we walked through the walkways and up and down the stairs, I reflected on how this site feels very much like a metaphor for Montreal itself: inspired, layered with so many interlocking parts, brave bordering on arrogant, and off-putting from a distance, but actually pretty warm, once you get a closer look.
The architect’s brashness didn’t come out of nowhere, nor did Expo 67’s bold ambitions; these were heady times. Modernist ideals were sweeping aside the old, or so we were told. All that was solid would melt into air in ways that would reshape a world that only twenty or so years prior had nearly destroyed itself through tribal allegiances; a new Man and a new World were not only possible – they were in the making.
If Seattle’s 1962 World Fair (officially known as “Century 21”) was the goofy grin of American post-war optimism, already outmoded by the time it came to pass, then #Expo67 was the knowing nod of a much more sophisticated kind of determination, one that was well aware of the challenges of universal harmony, but no less confident in Man’s ability to triumph in the end.
If Seattle ’62 was overshadowed by Cold War animosities (the USSR did not hang out in the shade of the Space Needle), then Montreal ’67 seemed like a very real opportunity to integrate that shadow (the USSR did hang out here).
But, of course, all the geometric shapes in the universe cannot contain the subterranean forces that shape the actually-existing world. If was on a visit to Expo 67 that President de Gaulle proclaimed “vive le Québec libre!” – a moment immortalized outside the SSJB’s headquarters today, a few meters from the only memorial to the October Crisis that would come a few years later.
It would appear that the ideals of universal brotherhood and tribal allegiance are not easy to tell apart.
#Expo67‘s theme was inspired by the title of a book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the same guy who wrote The Little Prince. The man was a pilot and much of the worldview that has drawn so many people to his writings comes from that God’s-Eye-View from above. Here’s how an Expo publication made the link between the two:
“Moved as he was by a heightened awareness of the solitude of all creation and by the human need for solidarity, Saint-Exupéry found a phrase to express his anguish and his hope that was as simple as it was rich in meaning; and because that phrase was chosen many years later to be the governing idea of Expo 67, a group of people from all walks of life was invited by the Corporation to reflect upon it and to see how it could be given tangible form.”
Habitat 67 was in some ways one of those tangible forms: a uniting of opposites to promote solidaristic living through modern building means. But one unexpected form it took that I’ve only been able to learn about in one chapter of one book and a few websites was the Christian Pavillion.
One contemporary reviewer described it as “a bold annunciation of what’s happening. Truly ecumenical … the controversial building attempts to meet the challenge and need of our electronic age … The lack of familiar and identifiable Christian symbols, and the use of modern photographs showing the variety of human life and problems, offend popular piety and theological conservatism.”
Its theme was “The Eighth Day” and it showcased images of “this solitude through which we grow,” some mundane, others shocking, like Mussolini, the mushroom cloud, & other horrors of war. This was the world as it is. Hints of the world to come were found up a flight of stairs in a hall with five bible quotes and seats to sit and contemplate.
One blogger noted that many visitors were baffled, calling the pavilion “blasphemous” or “in poor taste.” But, by withholding easy answers and refusing the exuberance of the time, I wonder: which god was being blasphemed?