r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Icehxart • 11d ago
Video Lego Apartments “Habitat 67” in Montreal, QC, Canada
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u/martian4x 11d ago
Cool Outside but is it practical Inside?
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u/sleepyyheead 11d ago
Imagine being a DoorDash driver trying to find apartment 402 in this place.
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u/SkintChestnut 11d ago
Okay, 122... 122... and an eighth? Where the heck is 122 and an eighth?
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u/theRebelJamesStark 11d ago
Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for a late pizza
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u/jonfreakinzoidberg 10d ago
No no no. Its 122 and you gotta bring an eighth
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u/ShortysTRM 10d ago
"Eighth wasn't supposed to part of the address man, sorry! But since you brought it up, do you happen to know..."
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u/sinisterdesign 10d ago
Or what the fire escape map looks like ➡️➡️⬇️⬆️🔜⤵️➡️↘️↖️🔝⬆️⬆️⬇️🔚
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u/Fragrant-Mess4927 10d ago
What the hell is this a fire escape or moves for street fighter?
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u/mfigroid 10d ago
Exactly! I lived in an apartment that wasn't as bad as this but still bad to navigate if you didn't live there.
I always went out to the entrance of the complex to wait for pizza delivery because there was no way they would find me.
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u/TheyTried2BanMeAgain 10d ago
I used to work at a pizza place, not driving but organizing deliveries. Drivers really, really appreciate that sort of thing, because like someone else said, the longer the next person waits means less money for the driver.
And some complexes are absolutely ass-backwards, you'll have building Q next to building B and all of them are marked as door 500-whatever even though it's all on the ground floor.
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u/SantosCalzonesBatman 10d ago
Probably easy as hell since despite the shape they all share certain spaces where stairs and/or elevators are
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u/throwaway098764567 10d ago
there's a cluster of a dozen door dash drivers just crying in the middle somewhere, one used their long dead phones to make an SOS signal on the ground
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u/bioschmio 11d ago
You can go on a tour!
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u/MuchDevelopment7084 11d ago
Why am I suddenly getting the 'this is going to be very, very, expensive vibes' all of a sudden. lol
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u/Inexorably_lost 10d ago
It's water front AND someone cared about the architecture. Yeah, it's gonna be expensive.
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u/Dragonasaur Interested 11d ago
It's Montreal, lots of good affordable housing but also lots of rich people with expensive houses
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u/Manic5PA 10d ago
I was going to say "so like any city" but then I remembered the other big cities in Canada don't have any affordable housing
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u/Dragonasaur Interested 10d ago
Yep, only the tier 3 and maybe 2 cities
Winnipeg is getting a Uniqlo
Kitchener/Waterloo rent is out the roof, insanity
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u/heimdal96 10d ago
Houses in Edmonton are pretty affordable. Rents in Edmonton are moderately affordable
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u/MuchDevelopment7084 11d ago
This looks like that kind of area. Expensive I mean. The Expo peninsula. On the water, great view of the city, etc. I'd absolutely love to visit it.
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u/sercosan 10d ago
lots of good affordable housing
Unfortunately, not anymore, my friend. Things here are CRAZY expensive and getting worse by the day.
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u/Dragonasaur Interested 10d ago
$1800 for downtown Montreal, meanwhile crummy apartments from the 90s in downtown Toronto are immediately gobbled up at $2400
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 10d ago
If you Google Habitat 67 for sale you can see some interiors in real estate listings. They're really nice apartments with amazing views. If they had higher ceilings they'd be my dream home.
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u/citsonga_cixelsyd 10d ago
Reminds me of the habitrail set up that I had for my pet gerbils back in the 70s.
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u/Oberon_Swanson 10d ago
i saw a review of them from an architecture critic, and i expected him to call them a dumb gimmick. he actually thought it was great especially in how it gives the units way more window space than the average apartment would get
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u/DetroitAdjacent 10d ago
I just looked them up and these are now very upscale housing. Interior designers seem to have made pretty good use of the space in the few interior photos I've found.
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u/jappyjappyhoyhoy 10d ago
It’s really nice inside and each unit has its own outdoor space or solarium
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u/lentil-_-Soup 11d ago
The best part about this is probably little to no walls shared with neighbors
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u/SouldiesButGoodies84 11d ago
No shared walls and I get to live in a Tetris Village. What's the rent?
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u/mediocreAltbest 11d ago
Looked it up there are 158 owned units in the co hab that "generally sells for millions" with 1500+ a month in like HOA fees
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u/scarletxgrace 11d ago
1.5k / month for HOA is fucking insane.
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u/mediocreAltbest 11d ago
There is apparently a shit ton of concrete maintenance
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u/maxxspeed57 10d ago
What could possibly be the draw to live there? It sounds like a huge waste of money to me.
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u/SouldiesButGoodies84 10d ago
😦
Ah. Then lemme rephrase: fuck that Flintstone madness. Didn't wanna live in a Tetris suite anyway 😑😭
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u/Transconan 11d ago
Each window apparently has an unobstructed view and retains privacy from peering neighbors
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u/EC_TWD 11d ago
But also you don’t get the environmental benefits of shared walls & floor/ceiling and lower utility costs from not having exposed surfaces for heating and cooling.
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u/listenhere111 10d ago
Which means more maintenance, higher hheating costs and a ton of wasted space
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u/YeahNahYeahhNah 11d ago
Seems like it’d be a bitch to drunk walk back to the apartment
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u/sleepyyheead 11d ago
At that point you just have to hop your way up to your front door like Q*bert.
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u/JerryVand 11d ago
It would be a shame not to mention the name of the architect of Habitat 67: Moshe Safdie. Safdie has had a long and distinguished career beyond this project, which was conceived as his thesis project at McGill University.
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u/TerryTrepanation 10d ago
My understanding is that this was not his pure intention, but was a significant compromise, due to factors such as cost and time etc.
The link posted below is a rendering of what he really had in mind.
I think he was a visionary, but Habitat67 does him dirty.
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u/fredinNH 10d ago
I’ve admired the habitat 67 building for a long time and the Wikipedia page pictures taught me that I’ve been in many of his buildings. I never would have guessed it was the same guy
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u/old_gold_mountain 10d ago
his great nephews are also currently very in vogue film directors (Uncut Gems, Marty Supreme, etc...)
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11d ago
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u/DigNitty Interested 10d ago
Don’t forget about the Franklin Mitte neighborhood in Germany that made the H O M and E shaped buildings viewable from the city center. But building M got held up in bureaucracy leading to….
Currently the town just says HO E
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u/Optimistic-Bob01 10d ago
Sure a lot better than some of the cell blocks they call housing around here. Hate to be designing so it's convenient for door dash.
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u/Fucky0uthatswhy 11d ago
Have you ever seen Lego
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u/Ok-Bet7465 10d ago
Yeah was gonna say, how is this a lego building? I've been to Lego land, never saw anything that looked like this. Correct me if im wrong, or do I not know what Legos look like
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u/Necromonicon_ 10d ago
I took a tour there earlier this summer and the guide revealed a lot of interesting stuff. For starters, while there are stairs and elevators, the elevators only go to certain floors. The building was also made with little consideration for the local wildlife. As such it has a bit of a bug problem. The stairs are literally crunchy with the sheer amount of dead bugs on every surface. There were even a reasonable amount of dead bugs in the apartment we entered as part of the tour. I guess throughout the years individual tenets have bought out nearby apartments and combined them so the size of each ranges from I think 2-5 blocks. From my understanding while buying an apartment isn’t cheap, the real cost is insane monthly matinence fees for the specialized crews required to look after everything. In addition to the matinence on the concrete, All the wires and plumbing are located in a sub floor under each apartment and exit through these big black pipes which no normal electrician or plumber would have any idea how to deal with.
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u/Real_Bobsbacon 10d ago
Sounds about what I expected. Must awful in the winter too with heating costs.
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u/Lost1010 11d ago
I almost drowned next to those one time.
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u/notanyimbecile 10d ago edited 10d ago
Cité du Havre park party? Ou la vague?
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u/Lost1010 10d ago
The wave
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u/notanyimbecile 10d ago
Happy you're still here, surf's up
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u/johnpmac2 11d ago
There is an amazing set of rapids behind this apartment
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u/AlbertTheHorse 10d ago
Béton Brut
I think some spaces have been remodeled into beautiful indoor/outdoor and very private residences.
I’d live there.
Everyone hates on brutalism, but in a sunnier clime, or one that isn’t the UK, it can be nice.
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u/No-Definition1474 10d ago
SIX SEVEN
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u/TheWetNapkin 10d ago
Bro 😭
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u/No-Definition1474 10d ago
Lol I had too.
I have 3 kids, one of whom is 6 so we were knee deep in 67 trash. Now I remind them of it as often as possible. The older 2 are beyond sick of it and the 6 year old laughs and then tells me 'dad thats a dead meme!'
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u/keksivaras 10d ago
how do you complain about your neighbors? "so my neighbor at x: 385 y:264 z:35 is.."
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u/lightinthedark-d 11d ago
ARCHITECTURE!!
Maybe a bit too much architecture.
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u/Hungry-for-relief 10d ago
I drive past these all the time, it's crazy expensive to live In one of these things just because of the way it's designed.
$2 million to purchase one, and $4,000 to rent or more.
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u/Alternative-Waltz892 11d ago
Doesn't look like an efficient use of space
Not that it isn't cool
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u/SleepyOrcShaman 11d ago
As someone noted -- this set-up might make noise complaints less likely because of less floor to ceiling contact.
Don't think that's the main point of the design, but there is at least one practical advantage
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u/CarelessProcedure 10d ago
Except it is Montreal. Don't all those exposed walls also have the major drawback of making it much more expensive to heat in the winter? It's cool, and COOL
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u/zombiepilot420 11d ago
That was never the point. Iirc it was designed and built for a world fair that took place in Montreal.
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u/pasenast 11d ago
There's a video on YouTube that explains why this design came about and how it solves the space issues of traditional designs.
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u/ScottishKnifemaker 11d ago
thats so freaking awesome, I would love to live there
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u/Ok-Addition1264 11d ago
..until you see it's odd location between two waterways and experience a canadian winter at high wind with very little protection between you and it (except some notoriously inefficient concrete)
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u/badgerj 11d ago
Don’t hold back. Share the average rental price per month and the square footage per unit!
That’ll blow their mind!
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u/ScottishKnifemaker 10d ago
I live in bakersfield ca, where the summer last 7 months and there is no winter, i lived in Maine for 6 months december to june, I welcome the -20
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u/SeaToTheBass 10d ago
I was born in the Yukon, live on Vancouver Island now. The summer heat is getting to be too much, and I miss real winter not just 6 months of rain. I’m really thinking about moving back
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u/tpasmall 10d ago
Bot
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u/AdventurousBase221 10d ago
wtf is out here making bots that just out themselves with a single word post
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u/MaxwellSmart07 10d ago
When I lived in Montreal, I would visit a woman who lived there who I met on a modeling job. If ai remember correctly it’s situated on an island.
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u/AssistantLong7377 10d ago
Funny enough, there’s a walkable project in Unreal Engine, for anyone wondering how it is
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u/Guaymaster 10d ago
Bruh what
Holy Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon, I just read about this earlier today.
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u/fucktrance 10d ago
As a huge fan of brutalist architecture the full plan for Habitat 67 is super interesting, there was a company that fully realised the designers vision in UE5 I believe that's definitely worth checking out
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u/CityOutlier 10d ago
Usually not a fan of modern looking archetecture but that actually looks pretty cool
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u/RickedSab 10d ago
With all the recent earthquakes events, will those houses stand before it?
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u/darksidemags 10d ago
Montreal doesn't really get earthquakes like that and Habitat has been standing since 1967.
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u/Deimos_PRK 10d ago
Yeah it was made by an artists. It's made so every apparemment is different inside, I think it's pretty cool, looks great from the old port
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u/Retsae_Gge 11d ago
Ahh man those poor electricians and plumbers while construction 🤣
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u/77entropy 10d ago
Yeah, make sure no water filled pipes are on an exterior wall so they don't freeze and burst. No problem. Well, maybe one.
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u/katastrof 10d ago
As someone living in Tornado Alley, this looks a lot like a trailer park about to get demolished.
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u/antarmy99 10d ago
The craziest part is that this was built in 1967. It still looks like someone’s concept art for future housing.
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u/Shartschnitzel 10d ago
You can also go surfing right next to this building:
https://www.surfertoday.com/surfing/surfing-the-habitat-67-river-wave-in-canada
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 10d ago
I've often wondered with those type of overhangs on a residential building: does it get colder in the winter because of the cold air sitting underneath you?
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u/Silver_Breakfast7096 10d ago
I always wonder about how cold the floors get in the areas that are midair sticking out. I’ll bet they get uncomfortable in the winter.
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u/InfiniteMind1999 10d ago
Imagine getting home late at night, blasted off your ass, and now you gotta deal with David bowies personal stair cases
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u/virgin_microbe 10d ago
I went with my family to Expo 67, and remember touring these apartments. So cool that they are still around!
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u/Real_Bobsbacon 10d ago
As someone doing a Structural and Architectural Engineering degree:
Looks cool, fucking horrendously inefficient and unnecessary.
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u/bodhivriksha 11d ago
I don’t like watching this post right after a post of the recent colombia earthquake
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u/Tricky-Ad7897 10d ago
I'd love to see the floorplans, I'm assuming the parts where they're all stacked on top of each other are where the stairs and elevator are, and that would lead me to believe there's also some funky split level apartment floor plans. Seems like you'd get a lot of natural light and privacy/sound isolation with the benefits of a dense community and common areas/amenities.
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u/CanadianBobert 10d ago
One of the "demo" houses you can go into has two of the rectangular pieces on top of each other and is sort of a waste of space on the top one. But it was made as a "hosting" place for people during the expo and was made up of what could've been 4 different apartments I believe.
But every apartment has amazing views with the layout and every apartment had its own outside deck which people turned into solariums.
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u/AlwaysSatori 10d ago
As a window cleaner, this looks like a nightmare.
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u/Aetheldrake 10d ago
Or an amazing paycheck because you can charge extra and really don't have more windows to clean just more travel between windows
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u/WyattfuckinEarp 10d ago
Love the idea and look of it. But as someone who is a commercial GC, what an absolute nightmare, the drawings must be terrible
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u/Bleatbleatbang 11d ago
That’s a lot of flat roofing thats going to be a nightmare.
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u/biaggio 11d ago
Weren't these built for the Montréal world's fair in 1967?