Renowned Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie is coming home, in a way. The man to whom we owe the iconic Habitat 67 decided to bequeath all his professional archives to McGill University, where he was trained in architecture.
Updated yesterday at 3:36 p.m.
“It’s a very emotional day for me,” he said during a press conference at the university’s Redpath Hall on Tuesday morning, as a torrential rain fell outside. . And for good reason, since the donation to McGill University sums up the work of an entire life: it includes more than 100,000 pieces, including sketches, models, or even correspondence taken from more than 300 projects located in the four corners of the world.
But again and above all, Safdie bequeathed to McGill his own unit of Habitat 67, made up of four modules, which will be used in particular for university research, artists in residence or exhibitions. “I find it important that the unit be part of the archives, because it is a physical element. People can visit it, students can go there and hold conferences there, for example. »
Remember that the huge housing complex, built in the wake of the 1967 World’s Fair, was inspired by Safdie’s graduation project when he was a student at McGill, named A Case For City Living.
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Moshe Safdie on the construction site of Habitat 67, in 1966.
The architect who now lives in Boston lived in two different units of the complex, one during the expo and the other afterwards. The second, the one he bequeaths, first belonged to the Commissioner General of Expo 67, Pierre Dupuy. Charles de Gaulle even stopped there to rest during his visit that year!
But for Safdie, it was mainly where he raised his children until he left for Harvard in 1978. “Yesterday, I went there with my daughter, and she went back to her old room “, he says. His daughter, also an architect, is now 61 years old. “It makes me particularly happy that the apartment is part of the public domain. And that it is included in the archives makes it all so much more alive,” sums up the father, himself 84 years old.
Why Montreal?
It may seem surprising that Moshe Safdie chose to leave the traces of his work here, he who has worked in several places in the world, including Israel, Asia and the United States. There were indeed other interested parties, he suggests, but let’s say that Montreal had been able to express its interest well in advance. “The first time McGill approached me about this was 30 years ago! he laughs. But also, he says he is grateful for the support that Canada has always shown him, in addition to having given him his first chance.
Because in addition to Habitat, we owe him a lot of institutional architecture here, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Musée de la civilization in Québec, or the Jean-Noël Desmarais pavilion at the Musée des fine arts of Montreal. “It’s a continuous love story”, he summarizes in conclusion, before promising to work very hard to produce even more documents!