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IN:PRINT 01: Habitat 67 - Sectional Perspective
PrintIN:PRINT - September 26
Conceived by Moshe Safdie for Expo 67 and built on the Cité du Havre peninsula, Habitat 67 began as his master's thesis at McGill — an argument for bringing the garden, the light and the privacy of the suburban house into the density of the city. The complex stacks identical prefabricated concrete modules, cast on site and lifted into place by crane, into a stepped, pyramidal cluster rising to twelve storeys and originally forming 158 residences. Each module is set back from the one beneath it, so that every roof becomes the open-air terrace of the dwelling above.
This sectional perspective cuts through that logic. It exposes how the boxes are stacked and cantilevered, how the setbacks carve out the gardens, and how the whole mass — bound together by post-tensioned rods, steel cables and welded joints — reads as suspended rather than simply piled up. I re-traced the drawing by hand in archival ink, holding to the austere, Brutalist clarity of the original while letting the section read as a single continuous structure.
