Safdie Architects and Neoscape unveil digital model of Habitat 67

Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67, a project the architect designed for his master’s thesis at McGill University that was later spun into the 1967 world’s fair in Montreal, has been fully realized as a digital model through software from Unreal Engine and Reality Capture. Creative agency Neoscape was approached by Epic Games—the developer behind the game engine Unreal Engine and owner of Reality Capture, a software used for making 3D models using photographs or laser scans—to use its softwares to trial architectural potentials.

Neoscape worked closely with Safdie Architects to realize the digital model of Habitat 67’s original design. The project began with drone-mapping the existing building using LiDAR and separately drone-mapping 4,136 high-resolution images to detail the complex’s structural features.   

Sketch of a modernist housing complex
The housing was constructed as a series of rhomboidal membranes facing southeast or southwest, resting on large A-frame supports that enclose inclined elevators and fire stairs. (Courtesy Safdie Architects)

 

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