Precedents
The Durham Portable Home

Moshe Safdie
Habitat Montreal

 In order to take 75% (of the house) into the factory, you had to deal not with panels but with volumes of space.

Safdie, 1970

Safdie's interest in modular building systems, begun during his studies at McGill University, is most popularly known in Montreal Habitat. The project was built as housing for the Montreal Expo of 1976. Habitat uses a single repetitive unit create a variety of housing units.

Habitat Montreal consists of 158 houses constructed out of 354 modular units. There are eighteen different house types based on the single box (17.5'x 38.5'x 10.5'). They range in size from a single bedroom, 600 square foot "house" to a four bedroom unit of 1800 square feet.

Safdie's fascination with the single module, led to a building constructed by means of stacking. This strategy allowed him to create pedestrian "streets," private gardens, and provide multiple views for every unit.

Image Credit: Moshe Safdie: Beyond Habitat, Edt. John Kettle, MIT Press, 1970


Safdie's Habitat, like the projects of Archigram and Paul Rudolph, betrays an architect's interest in urban conditions. All three use the traditional focus of manufactured housing -- the unit -- to create a dense assemblage. While later architects would examine how to arrange multiple units - especially Duany, Plater-Zyberk, none would stray from the essentially suburban model of manufactured home ownership.