Last summer I went to see Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 in Montréal. Unfortunately, you can really on experience the architecture from the street. The entire complex is clearly marked as private and you can tell they have to work very diligently to keep the throngs of architecture nerds at bay. I almost called up an agent to see if I could see one of the listed apartments, but decided not to waste anybody’s time.

Thankfully, James Brittain has a photography exhibition going on in London right now called Revisited: Habitat 67. The aim of the exhibition is to expose the hidden side of the famous housing complex, which I find fascinating, particularly because I wasn’t able to see anything hidden last summer. You can check out a bunch of his photos over at The Spaces.

There are many dimensions to Habitat 67. But one aspect that stands out is this idea of conferring the benefits of low-rise single-family housing – things like large outdoor spaces and access to light – onto higher density urban housing. It is something that architects today still explore and something that we consider in basically all of our development projects. Habitat 67 considered this over 50 years ago.

The Spaces just featured 21 Scott Street in Bronte (a suburb of Sydney) as its property of the week. (The home is currently listed.)

Designed by MCK Architects, the home is also called the “Upsilon House” and was supposedly designed for a fashion-industry couple.

Two things should immediately stand out to you about the house. One is how long and narrow the site and house are.

Here is a lengthwise view of the main living floor:

Based on the plans provided by The Agency (listing agency), the house is about ~3.9m wide. That’s because of its tight site. However, the clerestory windows that run the length of the house would provide ample light.

The other thing that should stand out is all of the exposed concrete. The Spaces calls it “soft brutalism.” I personally love it, but I recognize that it’s not for everyone.

In any event, it reminded me of a recent blog post by Witold Rybczynski in which he responded to the New York Times calling Habitat in Montreal a brutalist building. His rebuttal: that’s a gross over-simplification. Brutalism, in its truest sense, is about dramatizing the “rough character of concrete.”

But I particularly enjoyed how he ended the post:

“There is another litmus test of Brutalism. Buildings like Habitat remain popular with their users. If people don’t hate it, it can’t be Brutalist.”

If that’s the case, then 21 Scott is certainly not Brutalism in my book.

Images via MCK Architects