This text explores two housing projects in the city of Montreal, Canada, both

named ‘Habitat’. Habitat 67 (fig. 1) speaks to a moment of idealized unity in the past,

while Habitat 04 (fig. 2) marks a complicated current within Montreal’s urban present.

These two projects, one permanent, and one ephemeral, refer to issues of local and

national self-consciousness, and civic myth. Moshe Safdie designed Habitat 67 for the

1967 international exhibition in Montreal, known as ‘Expo 67’. Now a world-famous

example of utopian, late-modernist domestic architecture, the project was intended as

affordable housing for the middle class. Situated between the densely urban island of

Montreal and the suburbs across the St. Laurence River, Habitat 67 is reminiscent of

an island itself. In contrast to its original purpose, and removed from its emergence in

a wave of nationalist sentiment, Habitat 67 is today one of Montreal’s most exclusive

addresses. Isolated from the mass of pavilions and visitors who attended its opening

thirty-seven years ago, Habitat 67 has become a symbol of affluence and nostalgia, of

a Montreal of another time.

For several months in 2004, another Habitat could be found in Montreal, ‘Habi-

tat 04 – Cats Radiant City’, an installation by contemporary artist, Brian Jungen. This

second Habitat was in some ways a homage to the first, but also spoke to difficult civic

issues of homelessness, the costs of utopianism, and the poverty of local solutions to

the worst housing shortage in decades. In addition to such concerns, the artwork un-

derscored the notion of ‘habitat’ in a different, less referential manner. Taking an un-

THE (HUMAN) HABITAT:

HUMANISM, ARCHITECTURE AND

HABITAT 67/04

CYNTHIA I. HAMMOND

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

227

usual approach, the artwork directly addressed how the human demand for a ‘habitat’

affects other species. Jungen’s intention was to build a temporary shelter, in the form

of Habitat 67, for stray and homeless cats.

To address the dialogue between these two habitats, this text draws from the

ideas of philosopher Jacques Derrida and theorist Donna Haraway, who have explored

the constitutive relationship between notions of animalism and human subjectivity.

In recent work, Derrida has proposed that we rethink the familiar, yet often unex-

plored binary between human and animal (Derrida, 2003). He challenges us to imag-

ine modes of appellation, ways of naming life that are not harnessed or limited to

any particular species. This rejection of the notion of species is akin to the rejection

of the construct of ‘race’, and would allow for exchanges across categories and divi-

sions. Derrida conjures a term that would address the ensuing complexity and range

of beings subsumed under the expanded order of the animal, a range that would refuse

the ‘logic’ of that long-lived hierarchy, human over animal. This term, ‘l’animot,’ is a

combination of the French plural form of ‘animal’ (animaux) and the French noun for

‘word’ (mot). The term, l‘animot throws into question the set of characteristics – par-

ticularly the capacity for language - that so often is denied the animal and considered

only the province of the human.

Similarly, Donna Haraway has for many years advanced the notion that our

traditional, humanist conceptions of subjectivity fail to take into account the impact

of technology and other species upon the human subject, what she calls the ‘mutual

implosion’ of subjectivities (Haraway, 2005). Haraway’s famous defence of the notion

of an historically emergent subject, what she calls the ‘cyborg’, is further developed in

her recent work on ‘companion species’ (Haraway, 2000; 2003). Reaching into even

broader terrain than Derrida, Haraway proposes that the companion species, like the

cyborg, brings together

“the human and the non-human, the organic and technological, carbon and

silicon, freedom and structure, history and myth, the rich and the poor, the

state and the subject, diversity and depletion, modernity and postmodernity,

and nature and culture in unexpected ways…Partners in the crime of human

evolution, [companion species] are in the garden from the get go.” (Haraway,

2003, p. 4 et seq.)

In other words, the body of an animal – or an animot – is a complex entity, from

which a series of political connections and cultural investments may be drawn. Its sin-

gularity, its otherness from the human is as much a myth as its inferiority. Habitat 67

and Habitat 04 are so distinct in motivation and appearance that one might be tempted

to say that they are entirely different. But what Derrida and Haraway can provide in

this discussion is a sense of the larger ecology in which both structures operate, an

ecology that proposes a profoundly different lens with which to view architecture,

and the very ‘subject’ of architecture. Drawing from these two critical languages,

and the critique of humanism that they propose, I conclude by asking how the subject

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of utopian architecture may be radically reconstituted within the same architectural

referent; how Habitat 67, once rendered the home of a group of cats, can be rethought

through and against the discursive limitations of its original context.

In 1967 Canada celebrated its centennial year as a nation. The country’s birth-

day party took form in Montreal as Expo 67. Civic organizers intended the event to

mark the city as cosmopolitan and international, while the federal government hoped

that Expo 67 would herald Canada‘s global, modern emergence.1 This government

also sought to catch an unusually potent wave of nationalism surrounding the cen-

tennial. Expo 67 was on many levels an opportunity to define a strong, hopeful and

unified Canada. This desire concealed and revealed a conflict at the core of the patri-

otic project. Worried by aboriginal resistance from its earliest colonial incarnation,2

Canada is also fraught by longstanding

internal tensions between competing

colonial factions. This tension has his-

torically pivoted on an unresolved battle

between French and English. The French

population of Canada, dwelling pre-

dominantly in the province of Quebec,

have long been urged by the myth of the

Canadian nation to forgo their resistance

to that same entity. Situated in Montre-

al, Quebec’s urban core, Expo 67 was a

moment of public display in which this

mythic Canadian unity prevailed.

It is one of Canada’s national ironies that precisely at the moment in history

when the voices of the so-called ‘margins’ began to be heard most clearly, Canada

presented itself as a nation unified despite its internal differences. At Expo 67, the the-

atre for this vision, architecture would parlay these hopes in the form of pavilions and

utopian buildings, communicating the message of solidarity to visitors from numerous

countries, and to Canada’s own citizens.3 A particularly strong theme of Expo 67 was

that of natural resources and their role in Canadian prosperity.4 The Pulp and Paper

1 Expo 67’s official website, the Library and Archives of Canada, states, ‘In the case of Expo 67, a number of people…put forward the idea of holding the World‘s Fair in Montreal to mark Canada‘s centenary.’ The site goes on to say that both the city of Montreal and the province of Quebec lobbied the Canadian government for financial support, which they received: ‘The federal government would provide $20 million, the Quebec government would provide $15 million while the City of Montreal would spend $5 million.’ Each entity was literally invested in the success of this exhibition. Government of Canada, “Expo 67: Man and His World”, <http://www.collectionscanada.ca/05/0533/0533020101_e.html>, 21 Feb. 2005.

2 See for example, Daniel M. Paul’s discussion of Mi‘kmaq contact with European settlers and traders in We Were Not the Savages: a Mi‘kmaq Perspective on the Collision between European and Native American Civilizations (Halifax, N.S.: Fernwood, 2000).

3 Citing again Expo’s official website: ‘Some of the organizers were concerned that centennial festivities would be upstaged by the magnitude of Expo 67, and so the two events were linked.’ <http://www.collectionscanada.ca/05/0533/05330207_e.html>

4 The official Expo site states, ‘A few Canadian provinces and American states…had their own pavilions. Other pavilions represent-ed particular industries or explored the relationships between human beings and universal themes such as health, the environment, and work.’ <http://www.collectionscanada.ca/05/0533/05330202_e.html> At the Canadian pavilion, visitors to Expo encountered the Katimavik – an inverted pyramid – and the ‘People Tree’, covered with enormous images of Canadians, printed on brightly-coloured nylon sheets. Its shades of orange and scarlet, and its shape were a play on the national emblem of the maple tree.

Fig. 3

229

Pavilion (fig. 3), for example, was a series of stylized trees, displaying their purpose

via an enormous, unfurling swath of paper. Contrary to contemporary expectations

that such a pavilion might be concerned with issues of conservation and sustainabil-

ity, the Pulp and Paper Pavilion instead celebrated its core message, that of human

puissance and control over the natural world. And indeed, the concept around which

Expo organized was ‘Man and His World’. This theme spawned a series of related

categories, all positing humanity, or Man at their centre. These categories were: Man

the Creator, Man the Explorer, Man the Producer, Man the Provider, and Man and the

Community (Expo 67, 1967, p.30 et seq.). The essential motif, Man emerged through

national, provincial, and international pavilions, as well as industrial and corporate

structures.1 The discursive and architectural constructs of Expo cast diverse natural

resources of the world as inarticulate matter, over which Man had dominion, and for

which Man was responsible. The Official Guide to Expo stated, “The impression the

visitor receives is that the resources available to Man are still abundantly adequate

if he will use them with intelligence and understanding. The mood of Man the Pro-

ducer is therefore on confidence” (Expo, 1967, p. 58). Above all, however, Man was

Man’s primary concern, and thus at Expo, the traditional humanist subject managed

‘his’ world, through language, technology and culture. The Official Guide to Expo

exclaimed, “The conclusion of…the story of Man…is reassuring: Man is in control!”

(Expo, 1967, p. 62).

As one architectural critic wrote in 1967, the “role of the…pavilion [at Expo]…

was parallel to that of the private sector…within the city. Given a bold idea and a

coherent structure, the participants could be influenced to contribute in a positive

way” (Miller, 1967, p. 44). Given this potential, and the location of Expo on the edge

of the city of Montreal, the determination of a hallmark building to welcome visitors

to the site was a key concern. Organizers chose a ‘home of the future’ to provide a

touchstone and entryway into the larger theme of the exhibition. Architect Moshe

Safdie used system-building principles to render the principles of utopian architecture

in a cellular, building block style. Reminiscent of vernacular architecture such as tra-

ditional hill towns, the design was a critique of and alternative to the aesthetics and

problems of row housing, suburbia and the modernist high rise.2 Cost-efficiency, hu-

mane design, and the capacity for mass production were key goals of Habitat 67. Due

to a drastic cut in budget, the scale of the result differed significantly from Safdie’s

original intentions.3 The architect, however, did realize his hope of creating modular,

1 These industrial pavilions included the Steel Pavilion, Economic Progress, and the Polymer Pavilion. The larger pavilion, Man the Producer, had three subsections, including ‘Resources for Man’, ‘Progress’, and ‘Man in Control?’ Expo 67: Official Guide, 58-61. Broad critiques of modernist city planning and architecture were being articulated at the time that Safdie designed Habitat. Jane Jacobs’ seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (New York: Random House), published in 1961, is one such example.

2 Broad critiques of modernist city planning and architecture were being articulated at the time that Safdie designed Habitat. Jane Jacobs’ seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (New York: Random House), published in 1961, is one such example.

3 The original budget for the project was $42 million (Canadian dollars), for 950 units. The final budget was reduced to a mere $13.5 million, for 158 units, and no supporting facilities, such as the originally-planned schools, shopping and cultural centres. See the Canadian Architecture Collection, “The Moshe Safdie Hypermedia Archive”, < http://cac.mcgill.ca/safdie/habitat/original.htm> 21 Feb. 2005.

230

middle-income housing for the nuclear family. Contrary to popular perception, how-

ever, Habitat 67 was intended as low-production¬-cost housing, rather than low-cost

housing as such. The intended users/inhabitants were envisioned as middle-class.1

Habitat 67 was originally designed to consist of concrete units, pre-cast on site

and slotted into massive, inclined A-frames using assembly-line construction meth-

ods.2 The dwellings themselves were to provide the structural support of the complex

as a whole, with each module intelligently placed to ensure maximum privacy, fresh

air and balcony gardens for each dwelling. Much like the modernist trajectory that

preceded Habitat 67, Safdie’s project sought to make light and air standard features

(see Le Corbusier, 1971).3 As one of the few Expo buildings intended to be permanent,4

Habitat 67 occupied an important place within the exhibition. The Official Guide to

Expo stated, “Habitat 67…reveals…the extent to which man has used his ingenuity

in combining shelter with all the attributes of modern life, in an urban world”. (Expo,

1967, p. 29). Habitat 67 indicated the direction that all the natural resources and human

ingenuity on display should take: sheltering the human future.

Situated as potential inhabitants, millions of visitors were asked to anticipate

living in Habitat 67, to imagine how their lives and preferences, their furniture and

values, would fit within its blocky medley. By the close of Expo, however, only part

of Habitat was rented, and it would take years before the building reached full occu-

pancy.5 This vacancy was one small rift among several ruptures at Expo. The Indians

of Canada Pavilion, for example, given one of the smallest construction budgets of

the programme, was a fierce testimony to First Nations’ experiences of racism under

Canadian rule. Even more troublesome for Expo organizers, however, were the words

of visiting French president, Charles de Gaulle. During a public speech, De Gaulle,

addressing a crowd of Quebeçois, cried out, “Vive le Quebec Libre!” – Long live a

liberated Quebec (Quebec separatism, 2005). With these words, De Gaulle spoke to

the otherwise suppressed local strain between English and French, and the profound

regional desire for a formal separation from the very country whose supposed unity

was the cause of celebration.

1 Matthew Woodley, in his review for the Montreal Mirror, describes Habitat 67 as a ‘socialist housing dream.’ See ‘I tought I taw a Habitat’ Mirror Archives (March 18-24, 2004) <http://www.Montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2004/031804/visual_arts.html>. The Moshe Safdie Hypermedia Archive identifies the project’s conception as “born of the socialist ideals of the 1960s”. In the same statement, Safdie’s ‘life-long commitment to creating salubrious and dignified living environments’ is equally emphasized. <http://cac.mcgill.ca/safdie/habitat/concept.htm> 21 Feb. 2005. In his interview with John Gray in Expo 67: Habitat (Canada: Tundra Books, 1967), Safdie states, “For both house plan and room sizes we met current Canadian standards of middle-income families”, 20. See also A. E. Komendant, the chief engineer of Habitat, in his article, ‘Post-mortem on Habitat’ Progressive Architecture 49 (March 68), 138-147.

2 For a discussion of the modifications that had to be made, and problems encountered during construction see Kommendant, ibid., and Moshe Safdie’s article, ‘Habitat 67’ in Architectural Design, 37 (March 1967), 111-119.

3 Le Corbusier and Safdie’s aesthetic approaches to vertical building were quite different. The former preferred a smooth, mono-lithic, rectilinear structure, as opposed to the stacked quality of Habitat 67.

4 The United States Pavilion and the French Pavilion remain on the former Expo site to this day. Unlike Habitat, neither today manifests their original purpose.

5 According to the Moshe Safdie Hypermedia Archive, in 1965, 26 units were opened for exhibition purposes, while the remainder either were for sale or for rent. In 1967, only 26 units had been rented. See <http://cac.mcgill.ca/safdie/habitat/timeline2.htm>, 21 Feb. 2005.

231

Expo 67 remains one of the primary objects of affection in Canada’s national

imaginary, and there is no doubt that, with 50 million visitors it was one of the most

popular and well-attended public events in Canadian history. Yet in the three years

following Expo, increasing separatist unrest and violence shocked the federal govern-

ment, unwilling to accept the passionately felt differences within its borders. During

the ‘October Crisis’ of 1970, the peak of this violence, Montreal faced the suspen-

sion of civil liberties, an unprecedented act in Canada during peacetime. In profound

contrast to the city that Montreal had become during Expo, police were able to arrest

anyone on suspicion of having an alliance with La Front de la Liberation du Quebec,

the FLQ (See The Government of Canada, 2005). Shortly after the murder of one

hostage, the FLQ agreed to release another hostage to police in exchange for freedom.

The symbolic location the kidnappers chose for their exchange was Expo 67 (Front du

liberation de Quebec, 2005). With this gesture, Expo’s promise of a unified Canada

folded.

Feminist and equal rights movements swept the western world in the late sixties

and seventies, working to challenge the ‚Man‘ at the centre of both the world and Expo

67. These movements questioned whether, at a fundamental level, Man’s vision of the

future could speak for all, and if it did, at what cost, and to whom.1 As the character

of the ideal family at the heart of utopian housing projects was revealed to be often

sexist (and heterosexist) in nature, constructions such as Habitat 67 had to surrender

their claim as signposts to the radical future. As Habitat 67 became an increasingly

fashionable address during the 80s and 90s, it further had to relinquish its origins as a

prototype for mass-produced housing, and harbour instead more familiar expectations

around property and prestige.2

There is no doubt that Habitat 67 was not intended to perform in this way, and

that the political and social economies in which its architect hoped it would operate

were far more egalitarian and optimistic than what has transpired. It is possible to sug-

gest, however, that the housing project’s current cultural and financial capital may be

linked back to an element of its originating premise. Take, for example, its name. The

word ‘habitat’ indicates an animal’s dwelling place. It incorporates both the sense of a

home, and importantly, ownership. This latter sense, however, infers the particularly

anthropocentric nature of the word, in that only the human animal presumes to ‘have’

its dwelling place. And such ownership is significant, politically. The term, ‘habitat’

further betrays how the concept of home is bound up with citizenship within capitalist

economies. In Canada, for example, one teeters on the furthest margins of society if

one is ‘homeless’. Homeless people, within this system, have no ‘right’ to the shelters

1 Two of the most vital critiques of the utopianism of modernism, and its inherent sexism, are Matrix (1984). Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment. London: Pluto Press and Weisman, Leslie Kanes (1992). Discrimination By Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

2 Habitat was put up for sale by the owner, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Company (CMHC) in 1983. In 1986, the tenant company, the Housing Complex ‚67 and Co. Ltd., purchased Habitat. See <http://cac.mcgill.ca/safdie/habitat/timeline2.htm>, 21 Feb. 2005

232

they make, simply because they have not paid for them.1 Likewise, due to the im-

peratives of human habitat, other animals’ habitats are profoundly compromised. The

irony is that, whatever the species, an anthropocentric term – ‘homeless’ – describes a

situation engendered by that very same anthropocentrism.

In 2004, Canadian-Suiss artist, Brian Jungen built a new version of Habitat 67

(fig. 4). This Habitat, however, was not intended for the now lost and homeless subject

of a humanist worldview. Rather, Jungen created ‘Habitat 04’ for another homeless

entity: stray cats. ‘Habitat 04’ is a respectful reference

to the original, but its optimism is profoundly differ-

ent. The artist collaborated with the local Society for

the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, bringing eight

to ten cats to live in ‘Habitat 04’ for the duration of the

exhibition, or until they were adopted. As visitors took

cats home, other cats took their places.2 Every compo-

nent of the project was initiated, or adjusted in order to

ensure the cats’ greatest possible well-being.3

The shelter itself took on cat-specific qualities,

while remaining clear in its references. Jungen took

Habitat 67’s modular and interlocking forms, reduced

the scale by one-tenth, and in place of pre-cast con-

crete, constructed this Habitat out of plywood and car-

peting. The cats, like the residents of Habitat 67, had

floor-to-ceiling windows and ‘rooftop’ platforms on

which they could relax. Interior designers had decorat-

ed several dwellings within Habitat 67 in a minimalist theme (Safdie, 1967). Similarly,

bold, circular carpets in primary colours adorned the cats’ temporary home, providing

additional comfort, and aesthetic finesse to the boxy structure.

‘Habitat 04’, perceptibly a miniature of Habitat 67, was neither a copy nor a

model. The artwork was, rather, an opportunity to rethink the values and identities

that have been staged at the housing project since 1967. In this and other work, Jun-

gen has engaged critically with utopian, aesthetic discourse, provoking the history

of twentieth-century architecture to reflect upon one trait: its central and defining

humanism. Jungen’s art in the past has addressed the divide between the handmade

1 Louise O’Sullivan, City Councillor in the Ville Marie borough of Montreal, asked about the abolishment of squatters’ rights in Montreal, was recently quoted as saying, “It’s an incivility to squat in an abandoned building. You’re not supposed to loiter – there are regulations and by-laws. We have to respect people’s living spaces, be they residential or business. If I own a building and it’s not being used, it’s up to me to decide if someone else can use it.” Aliyana Traison, ‘Backs Against the Wall’, The McGill Daily, 34, <http://mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=3579> 7 Feb. 2005

2 A total of fifteen cats were adopted from the exhibition, and two went into permanent foster homes. Seven returned to the SPCA. Of these, five were adopted, and the remaining two went into temporary foster homes.

3 The artist decided to forego the traditional opening event, as it would be too frightening for the cats, and hosted a fundraising din-ner for the SPCA instead. See Kitty Scott (2004). Brian Jungen – Cité radieuse des chats/Cats Radiant City: Habitat 04. Montreal: Darling Foundry.

Fig. 4

233

and the mass-produced, the histories of modern art and architecture.1 Echoes of these

concerns thread through ‘Habitat 04’, but a principal question remains: how do the

cats who lived in Habitat 04 for the duration of the exhibition figure in the history to

which the work refers?

The short answer is that they do not. Or perhaps they are, like the natural world

against which architecture has traditionally been a refuge, and an antithesis, the foun-

dation of such a history, an othered and suppressed term in the monumental narrative

of modern art and architecture. Reviews and news accounts of the exhibition delighted

in the juxtaposition of something so locally familiar as Habitat 67, with something so

apparently unthreatening as affection-hungry stray cats. Several reviews understood

the work as a critique, not so much of Habitat 67, as of the costs of gentrification. Ac-

cordingly, these texts presented the cats as metaphors for the current housing crisis

in Montreal, for the vast numbers of homeless people presently living on the streets,

and the way that the ‘real’ Habitat has evolved into a privileged address (see Woodley,

2004; Hellman, 2004). To this extent, such accounts do register that Montrealers and

Canadians have inherited a very different city, country and world than those heralded

by Expo 67. But to fully grasp the opportunity that Jungen and the cats offer, is to

recognize how many of our dominant world views encounter, appropriate and depend

upon the specific marginality of homelessness, and the deep roots between that mar-

ginality, and the marginality of animals.

It is no accident of language that homeless people are perpetually stigmatized

for ‘living like animals’, that is, in dirt and garbage, for being unproductive in a capi-

talist sense. And it is likewise no coincidence that the designation of any human trait

or activity as ‘bestial’ is considered a most damning epithet. The logic is circular, as

will be familiar to students of binary thought. In order for the human to rise to the top

rank of (human-designated) worldly privilege, it must first climb over the fuselage

of ‘other’ species. Even within its own species, the ascending human subject must,

again, climb over those whose claim to rational thought has historically been contested

(women, children, the insane, and racially othered subjects).

Expo 67’s myths of human supremacy and control over a mute and pliant earth

have rebounded with tragic force, with ecological disasters and extinguished species

now commonplace. We no longer have the luxury of assuming we know what ideal liv-

ing conditions are, any more than we have the privilege of assuming that humans are at

the centre of any sustainable urban, or global plan. For this reason, the cats of ‘Habitat

04’ cannot merely be taken as metaphors for human, much less architectural, failure,

any more than the exhibition should be read simply as a sign for human homelessness.

To read the work in this way is to make the very error that the artist is proposing we

sidestep. The purpose of the cats, and power of Jungen’s work lie in how they give us

an opportunity to contemplate the utopian architectural form, and its subjects, differ-

ently, perhaps radically.

1 For an introduction to Jungen’s other projects, see ‘Brian Jungen’, <http://www.nativeonline.com/brian.htm> 21 Feb. 2005, and ‘Brian Jungen: July 28 to September 23, 2001’, <http://www.contemporaryartgallery.ca/exh/exh.BrianJungen.html>, 21 Feb. 2005.

234

I would like to return here to Derrida’s neologism, l’animot and its wilful conflu-

ence of language with the animal, irrespective of special affiliation, and to Haraway’s

notion of the companion species, whose presence implodes and reconstitutes the hu-

man. The force of these ideas lies in their jettisoning of the familiar and costly hierar-

chy of human over animal. As long as we conceive of the animal as the binary Other

to the inherently superior human, we practice a language which isolates and condemns

the non-human as inhuman, lacking both ‘our’ defining rationality and emotion. This

language, as we know, has had tragic consequences within human history alone. Jun-

gen’s undertaking continues Haraway and Derrida’s project: to radically dismantle the

Great Chain of Being in which the human always gets the top link. To be what these

thinkers challenge us to be, humans must consider revoking the ‘name of man’, and all

it has come to stand for. In short, in a world of les animots, ‘we’ would be something

quite different. We would find identity and purpose in what Haraway calls ‘companion

species’, and the enfolding of strangers. “When you enter a companion species world”,

says Haraway, “you are in a world in which you are compelled to act”. In this world

(which surrounds us and awaits us) we are obliged to become more worldly, acknowl-

edging the capacities of the species with whom we cohabit (Haraway, 2005, op. cit.).

And, as Derrida might say, we are obliged to expand that which is wordly. In such

a world, our notion of what is possible, architectural and other/wise, must likewise

expand, and adapt.

‘Habitat 04’ provided an opportunity to commence this rethinking, which is

in essence a creative encounter with the possibilities of utopian form. Its predeces-

sor invited the subjects of humanist discourse to engage with a prospective dwelling

in terms of occupation and possession. Visitors to ‘Habitat 04’ were asked instead to

consider the nature of their responsibility to the creatures living there. ‘Habitat 04’

did not resolve the problems of Habitat 67. Rather, the artist asked for a recognition

of and participation in the reciprocity between humans, animals, and habitat. The ar-

ticulation, through the project, of this request, points to the absence of such a proposal

at Expo 67, and at all other nation-building, androcentric endeavours. To provide an

opportunity for reciprocity between species is to provide a moment in which l’animot

may be recognized: as something akin to what I saw one day, working as a volunteer

during Jungen’s exhibition. A tiny kitten had a penchant for falling asleep after climb-

ing onto the backs of willing visitors. One afternoon, after sunning herself on the

second story, this kitten approached a man, who obligingly bent down near one of

the plywood blocks, where she could reach him.1 He bent forward, at a ninety-degree

angle, and the kitten climbed up between his shoulder blades. She fell asleep there,

purring. Other visitors passed by, laughing, petting the kitten and taking photographs.

The sun moved through the gallery, and the shadows shifted slightly. The kitten slept

peacefully. The man quietly shifted so that he might sit on one of the carpeted wooden

blocks of the construction, never disturbing the kitten. And so they remained, together

for a time.

1 The man in question was John LaTour.

235

References:

Derrida, Jacques (2003). And Say the Animal Responded? In Cary Wolfe (ed.). Zoontologies: The Ques-tion of the Animal, 121-146. Minnesota, London: University of Minnesota Press. Translated by David Wills.

Expo 67 (1967). Official Guide with Special Section on the Centennial Events. Toronto, Montreal, Van-couver, Calgary: McLean-Hunter Publishing.

‘Front du liberation de Quebec’, (21 Feb. 2005), http://www.chs.k12.nf.ca/socstud/ssgrassroots/Glob/FLQ%20Info.html.

Haraway, Donna (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto. In David Bell & Barbara M. Kennedy (eds.). The Cybercul-tures Reader, 291-324. London, New York: Routledge.

Haraway, Donna (2003). The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago, Illinois: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Haraway, Donna (February, 17, 2005). We Have Never Been Human: Companion Species in Naturecul-tures. Elizabeth McNab and D. Lorne Gales Lecture Series. McGill University, Montreal.

Hellman, Michel (20, 21 Mars, 2004). Condos pour minous. Le Devoir.

Le Corbusier (1971). A New Machine Age Society. Looking at City Planning, 11-25. New York: Grossman Publishers. Translated by Eleanor Levieux.

Miller, Jerry (May 1967). Expo 67: A Search for Order. Canadian Architect 44.

‘Quebec separatism’, 21 Feb. 2005, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/quebec.htm

Safdie. Expo 67: Habitat 25-26.

The Government of Canada, (21 Feb. 2005). The War Measures Act. Documents in Quebec History, http://www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/docs/october/wm-act.htm.

Woodley, Matthew (March 18-24, 2004). Mirror Archives, http://www.Montrealmirror.com/AR-CHIVES/2004/031804/visual_arts.html.

A shorter version of this paper was published as ‘Habitats for Animots’ in

BlackFlash 22, 2 (2005), 32-37. I would like to thank Annmarie Adams, Thomas

Strickland and Randal Rogers for insightful commentary on this text, and Kristina

Huneault and Janice Anderson for invaluable feedback at an earlier stage. I am grate-

ful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their sup-

port, to Billy Mavreas for sharing his private collection of Expo 67 documents with

me, and to the organizers of Architecture and Identity for the opportunity to further

consider these ideas.

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