February 16th, 2008
Shelter is a weekly Montreal Gazette series that peeks into the lives of ordinary apartment-dwelling Montrealers.
This installment looks at an apartment in Moshe Safdie’s iconic Habitat 67, inhabited by Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law. The apartment consists of four “cubes” covering 2,700 square feet, with an additional 1,800 square feet of outdoor terrace space.
Most apartments in Habitat consist of different cubes stuck together, right?
Right. Most of them are one or two blocks, and this was a three. (Gestures to a corridor leading away from the dining room.) The apartment used to stop here, but the people who owned it before me purchased the next block and turned it into a bedroom wing. It was a originally a one-block apartment, there was a kitchen, a living room, a dining room. You can see how you could have a nice little cozy apartment here.
So how much of the renovation was done by the previous owner and how much was yours?
About half and half. (We wander down the hall and into the bedroom. She gestures to a glass door leading onto a large terrace.) This is the back terrace, which is beautiful in the summer. It actually goes right over to the river. I have a lovely garden there in the summer. You can see the casino.
So you have views on both sides of the apartment, the city at the front and the river at the back.
Every single window has a gorgeous view, it’s amazing. (We head back into the dining room and down a flight of stairs. Most apartments in Habitat are split between two floors.) In the original three-block this was originally the living room, and the bedroom was over there. I took out all of the internal walls, so this is a huge entertaining space. It’s actually one block.
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October 14th, 2007
Shelter is a weekly Montreal Gazette series that peeks into the lives of ordinary apartment-dwelling Montrealers.
Well, my first impression is that it’s small but very bright.
Marcus Benigno: It’s very airy, very bright. Bright makes things look bigger.
What appealed to you when you first saw this apartment?
Benigno: The most important part was the location. It’s really close to McGill but it’s not in the ghetto. It’s sort of in the Plateau, and Carré St. Louis is right there. We can hear the fountain at night. Oh, and it’s old. It used to be the maids’ chambers to the house that’s on the square. That’s why this apartment building only has four or five units and it’s connected to the house. So we’re actually living in two maid chambers. There are two doors (to the apartment.) I would prefer that it didn’t open to the kitchen but, you know, the kitchen is the hearth of the home.
That’s a nice table in the living room.
Benigno: That’s Kevin’s grandmother’s table.
Kevin Garneau: Great-grandmother.
So it’s a family heirloom?
Benigno: A lot of the furniture is his great-grandmother’s. But you know, this table shows you that I can’t really have space for a real living room. But I guess it works because the centre of the house is food.
Do you eat most of your meals at home?
Benigno: Oh yes, definitely. We cook a lot. A lot. Trust me. I’ve spent the whole day washing dishes.
The kitchen is small, but is it functional?
Benigno: We have the tiniest kitchen in Montreal! But we do with what we have.
You told me earlier that you both spent the summer away on trips, Marcus in the Middle East and Kevin in Africa. Did you collect anything?
Garneau: This is a box with all my stuff from Africa. I have all of these art objects and posters that I have yet to put on the wall. Otherwise, it’s Marcus that normally takes care of the decoration. The decor isn’t really ready. We put something on the wall, not because it’s beautiful, but because it touches us, because we have a connection with it. It’s a relation d’appartenance.
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