A visit to Habitat 67 in Montreal reveals a stunning connection—to a favorite childhood toy.
“Whoa!” That’s how most people react when they first see a picture of Habitat 67, a pixelated concrete apartment building in Montreal, Canada. The complex looks remarkably like a creative arrangement of Lego bricks—and as it happens, the two institutions have a shared history.
Notes and Addenda
- This film makes the building look, well, uninhabited. Yet Habitat 67 has lots of residents, and the day’s English-language tour group had 19 paying guests.
- Moshe Safdie didn’t just use Legos to help conceive his project; he claims to have used so many, there was a Lego shortage across Canada.
- The tour is full of wild trivia and anecdotes about the property—and it’s absolutely worth the $58 ticket price—but a favorite observation is that Safdie did not consider himself a Brutalist, and he was in fact critical of Brutalism. Given the recent film The Brutalist and resurgent interest in this cement-based movement, one can only imagine the debates that have broken out in architecture circles.
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