THE HABITAT 67-STUDIO

The Habitat 67-Studio (28555) by HA Studio

Designer: David Huynh

Photography: David Huynh

HA Studio @huynh_arch_studio

Let's design a building which gives the qualities of a house to each unit. Habitat would be all about gardens, contact with nature, streets instead of corridors. They prefabricate it so they would achieve economy, and there, it is almost 50 years later. It's a very desirable place to live in. It's now a heritage building but it didn't proliferate. There are a lot of issues, low-rise environment, and with it comes congestion, and they lose mobility, and so on and so forth. So a few years ago, they decide to go back and rethink Habitat.

"Could they make it more affordable? Could they actually achieve this quality of life in densities that are prevailing today ?" And they realized, it's basically about light, it's about the sun, it's about nature, it's about fractalization can they open up the surface of the building so that it has more contact with the exterior? They came up with a number of models: economy models, cheaper to build and more compact: membranes of housing where people could design their own house and create their own gardens.

I want to touch on one more issue, which is the design of the public realm. A hundred years after they've begun building, with tall buildings, they are yet to understand how the tall high-rise building becomes a building block in making a city, in creating the public realm.

Habitat 67 one of the most unique and outstanding residential complexes in the world. It was located in a strip of land that was originally created as an icebreaker to protect the harbor of Montreal the st. Lawrence River on one side the old city in the old port Montreal on the other. It's an outstanding feature of the cityscape as well as a beautiful piece of architecture.

In the 60s, there was a general concern about how people are going to live in growing cities. Moshe Safdie and his students project at McGill University developed a thesis on three-dimensional housing complex to provide each family, each unit with outdoor space the original project was much larger and then they choose to reduce it to a prototype to rethink how people can live not just as a unit in a big compound but as part of the community.

Comprising a three-dimensional landscape of 354 stacked concrete "boxes", Habitat 67 pioneered the combination of two major housing typologies – the urban garden residence and the modular high-rise apartment building.

Moshe Safdie was awarded the project in spite of his relative youth and inexperience, an opportunity he later described as "a fairy tale, an amazing fairy tale." I think Habitat was important at its time because it had changed the architectural styles of the apartment building.

From the beginning, Habitat 67 has fascinated people. Today, it's still a marvel an architectural wonder but also a lesson for the future of the cities not just for the 60s but for today we hope you have enjoyed a visit of the Habitat 67 as well as building it with Lego Brick.

Interior design

H.A Studio (H.A 創作室), (as known as V.Boi Design Studio) is a small studio where specializes in the design and development of architectural models and as well as the re-design of famous icon landmark buildings, houses, and skylines in the world with small scales by Lego bricks. I always love architecture and Lego. As a designer, I'd like to bring whole historical and cultural knowledge in architecture, and life into the Lego world for all ages in order to achieve the term "Play & Learn."

The Habitat 67 - Studio (Lego)measures:

h (height) = 2.9 inches/ 73.66mm

l (length) = 10.5 inches/ 266.7mm

w(width) = 4.3 inches/ 109.22mm

This time, I designed differently from the first one is to expand the space of the model. I decided to use white in the studio to recreate habitat 67. This Habitat 67 Architecture set was constructed with approximately 805 Lego pieces. Not only did I learn a lot from Habitat 67 but I also did improve a lot my model at that time.