Habitat 67, situated on Marc-Drouin Quay in Montreal, is a housing complex designed by architect Moshe Safdie as part of the Expo 67 World Exhibition. Created to explore the Expo’s theme of affordable housing, the complex sought to offer modern, distinctive living spaces for Montreal’s diverse population. Its modular, interlocking concrete forms were prefabricated and stacked on-site, ensuring ample natural light for all apartments. Originally envisioned as a much larger project—1,350 cubic elements—only 354 were built due to construction costs and skepticism. Yet, even at a reduced scale, Habitat 67 has become one of Montreal’s most sought-after residences, a bold experiment in urban living that still holds its ground.

It’s hard to miss if you’re roaming the right corners of Montreal. The building hugs the St. Lawrence River’s edge in the Cité du Havre neighborhood, just south of Old Montreal. But it doesn’t demand attention; it lingers, waiting for you to find it—a cluster of concrete cubes stacked like half-formed thoughts against the sky. I’ve caught its silhouette myself, easy to spot when I’ve wandered down to soak in the roar of Formula One at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. It sits there, steady and unassuming, a quiet remnant of a city that once dreamed big.

The people inside those walls today—do they feel the echo of that world exhibition beneath their feet? Not the logistics, not the crowds, but the spirit of a moment tilting toward what could be? I imagine them pausing at their windows, light pouring in, sensing a thread of that summer’s optimism woven into the concrete. The building itself is messy poetry—lives overlapping in a structure that refuses to sit neat and tidy, a home born from an era that dared to ask big questions.

Safdie called it a piece of something unfinished, a shard of a city glimpsed but never fully realized. That incompleteness stays with me—not as loss, but as possibility. The exhibition was a burst of imagination, a fleeting canvas where ideas like this could take root, even if only in fragments. Cities evolve, dreams shift, but some visions linger—unfinished not because they failed, but because they still ask something of us.

Stepping back, I keep asking what does it mean to make a home—not just for ourselves, but for each other? To stack our lives close, inspired by a moment when the world believed we could? Maybe that’s the quiet legacy left behind—not a relic of what was, but an invitation to keep reaching. The city moves forward, its skyline changing, but those enduring cubes remain, catching the light—reminding us to dream, even if we never finish building.

I wonder where the World Expo 2030 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, will take us—what bold ideas it will spark, what lasting visions it will leave behind long after the pavilions are gone.

Image Personal Collection 2022
Originally Published on: Jun 14, 2022