We have written previously that we don’t all have to live in high rises to get dense cities; we should just learn from Montreal. Everybody loves the “plex” housing type that is a great demonstration of “missing middle” housing.
Le Borgne Rizk Architecture just completed two semi-detached triplexes: “A modern interpretation of a traditional Montreal triplex, historically featuring external front staircases. With surrounding residential units mainly designed with internal staircases, the firm focused on a design that would bridge the gap between traditional elements and existing neighbourhood characteristics.”
This is the kind of housing we should be building everywhere in cities in North America. As I wrote in “What’s the Right Way to Build in a Climate Crisis,” we need “gentle density” that you get with this kind of housing, which is illegal in most cities that devote most of the land to single-family houses. Because in the end, the single biggest factor in the carbon footprint in our cities isn’t the amount of insulation in our walls—it’s the zoning.
The traditional Montreal plexes used to have those exterior twisty deathtrap stairs that are not allowed anymore, but had a great advantage that there were no common corridors or hallways; everyone could go directly into their own unit. This is wonderful for privacy, sound, and smells. Stairs today have to be straighter and easier to climb, but the architects managed to respect the traditions and maintain the separation of entrances.
Here on the second-floor plan, you can see how the second-floor occupant goes straight in and the third-floor occupant goes through their own door. This is clever planning. Although they are not required in small buildings like this, one could imagine an elevator being clipped on the front of this with the brick screen moved out.
We have also noted that small buildings like this are the most carbon-efficient. As architect Piers Taylor noted in The Guardian, “Anything below two storeys and housing isn’t dense enough, anything much over five and it becomes too resource intensive.” Here, we are getting six residential units in the space of one big house—you don’t get more efficient than that.
They are nice inside too. The architects describe the concept:
The remarkable thing about Montreal’s housing is how many people they house, getting densities of over 11,000 people per square kilometer. It is the kind of housing that architect Daniel Parolek called the “missing middle,” and that I gave another name to a few years ago:
Thanks to Le Borgne Rizk Architecture, we are still learning from Montreal. We need a lot more of this—everywhere.
