10 ms·
“The Wall” Housing Structure In Fermont, Quebec
- amirmaleki 5y agoThis had an important lesson for my (try-not-to-be-)perfectionist mind: "Nature isn't perfect, so why should we be one?"
- mrgriscom 5y agoI've actually been here: http://mrgris.com/travel/blog/labrador/2/ http://mrgris.com/travel/blog/labrador/2/ Quite a weird place, though definitely not 50m tall.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- samwillis 5y agoPretty sure its a typo and meant to say 50ft, which is about 15m or about 2.7m/floor plus another 1.5m extra for the roof for the five story buildings you can see in the pictures. That looks like an incredible trip!
- SECProto 5y agoYup, 15m ("quinzaine mètres") tall. https://caniapiscau.ca/attraits/mur-ecran/ https://caniapiscau.ca/attraits/mur-ecran/
- francislavoie 5y agoInteresting, I think the English version of that page was mistranslated as per https://web.archive.org/web/20060421035031/http://www.caniapiscau.net/tourism/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060421035031/http://www.caniap... which seems like an old version of that same website. Fifteen and Fifty are easy to mix up.
- SECProto 5y agoYup, and looks to have persisted until at least 2012 [2] and then by 2013 [2] they just removed the English website as far as I can tell. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120904222048/http://www.caniapiscau.net/en/tourism/activities-attractions/attractions-sightseeing https://web.archive.org/web/20120904222048/http://www.caniap... [2] redirected to https://web.archive.org/web/20130720073238/http://www.caniapiscau.net/fr/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130720073238/http://www.caniap...
- melissalobos 5y agoThanks for sharing this, I have always wanted to go to Labrador. Just need much higher resolution pictures(send back a mirrorless DSLR to 2009?).
- TimedToasts 5y agoI enjoyed the blog entries and am definitely jealous! :)
- japhyr 5y agoBack in the 90s I lived in NYC and took a bicycle trip to Chibougamau, and then another summer rode a motorcycle as far as I could on pavement along the St Lawrence river. Your blog took me right back to those adventures; thanks so much for sharing!
- xwdv 5y agoThe title should be changed as this currently makes it clickbait. I was expecting a wall of over 164 feet in height.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoThat's a cool blog. I like the way that you switch between your side, and your wife's.
- soared 5y ago> But driving 150 miles one-way only to find an uncrossable ditch would be a rude surprise. My oxen would die trying to ford that river, so to speak. This is my favorite kind of blog, excellent stuff.
- brokenodometer 5y agoI didn’t expect to end up reading this whole thing, but I did and really enjoyed it! Love a good old fashioned travelblog without the bs “hacks”, ads, and affiliate links.
- stringfood 5y agoI always appreciate how HN links to sites that hardly have any ads, reminds me of old internet pages from a few years ago
- tomcam 5y agoWonderful post. I have a feeling they did something very right by making the interior corridor so wide. I imagine it feel a lot more open. Did the noisy ventilation at least keep it from smelling bad?
- jat850 5y agoI have to say that the Northern store in the Labrador pics was a massive nostalgia throwback.
- rotifer 5y agoFrom a bit later in the trip is a photo from the shore of Manicouagan Reservoir. According to Wikipedia [1], it's an annular lake formed about 214 million years ago by the impact of a meteor 5 km in diameter. It has an outer diameter of about 72 km, and it's "the Earth's sixth-largest confirmed impact crater according to rim-to-rim diameter", and one of the oldest known. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicouagan_Reservoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicouagan_Reservoir
- VHRanger 5y agoThere are a few oddly shaped lakes in the inconceivably large northern part of Quebec. One of my favorites is lake mistassini[1], an immense lake shaped like claw marks 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mistassini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mistassini
- LegitShady 5y agogood ol bear sector. It doesn't surprise me that small mining towns have strip clubs. Lots of people temporarily move to work there and are lacking in human comforts of all types.
- stringfood 5y agoI like your website, like a digital scrapbook immortalized online
- fifilura 5y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20220219171521/https://www.houseporn.ca/landscape/article/the_wall_housing_structure_in_fermont_quebec https://web.archive.org/web/20220219171521/https://www.house...
- francislavoie 5y agoMusic video filmed there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI9R2H_KkQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI9R2H_KkQk Such a great song and video, awesome cinematography, and includes some clips of residents shortly talking about it.
- jka 5y agoNice, thanks :) Enjoyed the sci-fi / Moon[1] vibes at t=189[2] (those neons might be to improve visibility of the trucks in the dark and/or during storms?). [1] - https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/17431-moon https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/17431-moon [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI9R2H_KkQk&t=189 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI9R2H_KkQk&t=189
- greenhorn123 5y ago
- samwillis 5y agoSeems to have been hugged to death, mirror: https://archive.is/0gcfh https://archive.is/0gcfh
- emrex 5y agoCorrect me if I am wrong but the number of floors does not meet the 50m height at all !!!
- francislavoie 5y agoIt might be measured from the basement floors up
- vidarh 5y agoOr someone has confused meters and feet.
- francislavoie 5y agoYeah, sounds about right. 50 feet = 15 meters.
- jaclaz 5y agoYes, 5 storeys x 3 meters = 15 metres, it sounds right.
- mypalmike 5y agoThat's a lot of basement.
- rand85632 5y agoLooks like it may have been a mistranslation of sorts with a 5-0 ft wall
- emrex 5y agoWanted to say maybe 50 feet but since I never measured with feet I was not confident enough.
- maxerickson 5y ago
- nabla9 5y agoDefinitely not 50m high. Maybe 50 feet 15.3m? That's the height of standard 5 five storey building like in the pictures.
- aaron_m04 5y agoThe site got the HN hug of death.
- Keyframe 5y agoIf you want to see another example of urban 'planning' against powerful winds, see Mediterranean coast. It's littered with densly packed narrow streets.
- dmurray 5y agoMore so than inland towns of the same age and size?
- Keyframe 5y agoYeah, coast can get a bit intense https://youtu.be/_rf9Jtgc1mE https://youtu.be/_rf9Jtgc1mE where there's a strong cold northern wind rushing down the coastal mountains (bura) and then there's a strong southern moist and warm wind coming from the open sea (jugo).. the interplay of the two dictated coastal settlements to be built like that where within the settlement you can barely feel it (as much).
- baybal2 5y agoI think we have just DDoSed the website.
- baybal2 5y agohttps://m.imgur.com/gallery/a8kfa https://m.imgur.com/gallery/a8kfa
- mig39 5y agoI was in Fermont a long time ago. I was driving from Goose Bay all the way south. in the 90s, the Labrador highway wasn't paved, it was just rough gravel. I got a flat tire somewhere near the border, then pulled into Fermont and tried my best high school-level French to find somewhere to fix my flat tire. I asked the guy at the gas station: "Excusez-moi, savez-vous où je peux trouver un garage pour réparer mon pneu crevé ?" He looked at me and said "Fixer le flat, huh?" No amount of formal French prepares you for Northern Quebecois "French" :-)
- cmehdy 5y agoFWIW your French is impeccable, and indeed there's no shortage of culture shock between France and Quebec for this sort of stuff. source: French from FR living in QC :)
- melissalobos 5y agoI think that is the point they was making. Also I read this in a Brunswick french accent until the word shortage, and it kinda worked(as franco-english like they were describing).
- gmfawcett 5y agoIf you want a happy rabbit-hole to visit for a few minutes, take a look at these examples of "Chiac", an Acadian French variety spoken in parts of New Brunswick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiac#Example_sentences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiac#Example_sentences A slightly legendary music video in Chiac: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cRPH4lb8UI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cRPH4lb8UI Right drôle!
- dghughes 5y agoA guy I worked with from New Brunswick was bilingual. He dated a woman from northern New Brunswick she only spoke French. When he met her parents he said her dad scowled at his poor French. To the father he was not French. So this person my co-worker bilingual French/English since birth had to take French lessons. I guess the words he used were bizarre to French-only ears.
- aliswe 5y agoI would see this title as highly misleading?
- francislavoie 5y agoThere was a mistranslation in documentation about this it seems. But yes, 15 meters (50 feet) tall. Also easy to mix up fifteen and fifty.
- aliswe 5y agoI was referring to the previous title saying that a city lives inside a wall!
- JamisonM 5y agoI don't know very much about this stuff but it seems to me that the fairly dense housing just "behind" the wall relative to the prevailing winds would suffer from A LOT of snow accumulation. I am sure I would enjoy living in that building and the community design seems good, if not quite as dense as might be ideal given some of the green space placement. If they have concerns about the wind they really need a lot more trees, I would venture a guess that a couple of good windrows of trees would be as good or better than the building -- but then of course trees aren't houses!
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago50m would be 12 storeys or more...
- Findecanor 5y agoI measured only 911 m on Google Maps, along the roof, and there is a sharp kink in that line and few smaller ones. The Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna, Austria is over 1000 m in a straight line, from one end to the other. Still the longest residential building in the world.
- trhway 5y agoIn USSR/Russia it is pretty typical to build wall-like housing. That one is a modern take on it (nicknamed "bleeding attic" for what architects intended to depict "northern lights" :) https://obzor78.ru/posts/domostroy_channel/4014 https://obzor78.ru/posts/domostroy_channel/4014
- bobthepanda 5y agoIt doesn't really claim to be the longest. There are pros and cons to such long buildings. Hong Kong actually started regulating breaks in buildings, because tall walls of buildings + mountains + irregular street grid meant that there was insufficient ventilation for roadside pollution to dissipate.
- Gys 5y agoA while ago I saw a tv series 'The Wall' (2019) [0]. Took me a few episodes to understand the name relates to an actual building that really is like a wall. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11577386/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11577386/
- lkuty 5y agoOriginal title "la faille" (fault, rift) translated as "the wall". I always wonder why the translation from english to french (usually, or the other way around) often changes the semantic. note the "la faille" in french may also mean "the flaw".
- cm2012 5y agoOn that day, mankind received a grim reminder.
- kens 5y agoThis interview with a stripper in Fermont provides an interesting look at the culture there: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dpwqzk/life-as-a-stripper-near-the-north-pole-786 https://www.vice.com/en/article/dpwqzk/life-as-a-stripper-ne...
- ralphc 5y agoA place with a strip club and a school in essentially the same building, that wouldn't fly in the US.
- ceejayoz 5y agoWell… https://lawandcrime.com/crazy/photos-show-principal-laughing-staffers-cheering-as-scantily-clad-students-give-lap-dances-during-man-pageant/ https://lawandcrime.com/crazy/photos-show-principal-laughing...
- Vvic 5y agoThere's also the largest "underground city" in Montréal, Québec to avoid winter. It links up universities, stores, offices, subways and much, much more!
- speed_spread 5y agoI feel the "underground city" is a bit oversold to tourists. It's mostly just a bunch of shopping malls and bland corridors. But yeah, you can walk for miles below ground level without ever setting foot outside. Especially if you include a Metro hop or two.
- 908B64B197 5y ago> But yeah, you can walk for miles below ground level without ever setting foot outside. It's ironic because if you visit Montréal in the summer everyone is outside. Also, if a French Canadian take you to lunch, expect to eat for 1+ hour. No such thing as a quick lunch.
- jrockway 5y agoI think the idea of the underground city is that it's nice in the winter. I lived in Chicago which has something similar, and never went down there except to take the train. It's all chain stores that have "upstairs" versions as well. Good if you're walking around outside and you notice there's a tornado heading your way, though.
- mattkrause 5y agoAmen! So many friends have wanted to "visit" it, but it's just shops, Starbuckses, and hallways with nary a mole person to be seen.
- bobthepanda 5y agoI mean really you could say that about most non-tourist attraction neighborhoods. It's probably indicative that it's nice for everyday residents. Most people's lives are pretty mundane.
- mleonhard 5y agoI wish there were photos from inside the building. External views don't show how it feels to be inside, which is an extremely important characteristic of any building.
- Elr 5y agoPardon my poor English, it isn't my first language. I've worked many years in the mining industry where I had to stay both in Fermont and inside workers camps on the mine itself (Mont-Wright). I went back during the summer of 2021 during my vacations to reminisce the good old days. Here is a video that shows older footages from inside "Le Mur", but it still looks the same to this day, minus the fact that most stores has since been closed. This structure is hosting a lot of apartments, a grocery store, a school, a medical clinic that I believe is only accessible from outside (You sometimes see people wearing pajamas at the grocery store or inside "The Wall" itself), a small bar with erotic dancers (La Fer-Tek), an ice rink and much more. I'd return live there in a heartbeat if I had the opportunity. Here are a video showing older footage followed by a video clip recorded in Fermont. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQWQqVp8v6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQWQqVp8v6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI9R2H_KkQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI9R2H_KkQk
- mleonhard 5y agoThank you! The first video shows the inside of an apartment at time 5:40, https://youtu.be/wQWQqVp8v6w?t=340 https://youtu.be/wQWQqVp8v6w?t=340 . It has plenty of natural light, with windows on two sides. Nice! What did you like about life in Fermont? What were the downsides for you?
- Elr 5y agoThank you for the questions! As a nature kind of person, Fermont had everything I was seeking; Plenty of forest, the ability to hunt, trap, fish almost anywhere, a lot of snow during the winter, the Northern lights, the fauna and much more. It IS the place for outdoor activities. If you ever drive on the 389, I recommend you check out the Mont Groulx. [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monts_Groulx https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monts_Groulx The infamous Manic 5 hydroelectric water dam is on that road. Bring a camera, don't be scared to enter the trails near rivers and lakes, you won't regret it. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel-Johnson_dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel-Johnson_dam You are close to Labrador City in case you need to take a flight, the salaries were insanely good in my field, the inhabitants were really friendly and always ready to help no matter what. On the downside, I would say that other than going in Newfoundland for errands, you are really far away from any other town and the more importantly, the sea (I'm from a fisherman village). Other than that, it does get really cold during winter. I've personally witnessed -63C on an iron mine, but fortunately, the humidity level is really low (it's dry). Cheers from the Great White North!
- irthomasthomas 5y agoAnyone else disapointed that the streetview car reached the entrance and then turned around? Is this a military base or something? https://www.google.com/maps/place/Fermont,+QC+G0G+1J0,+Canada/@52.7998796,-67.0929448,2304m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x4cf531c519019a3f:0xcb1ac405340ee4bc!8m2!3d52.7953958!4d-67.0842673?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/Fermont,+QC+G0G+1J0,+Canad...
- speed_spread 5y agoNot military but it's a mining town and as such most infrastructure might be private? Which would explain the limited streetview. But if you're willing to drive there yourself, it's not closed or anything.
- larrymcp 5y agoYea the building is open to the public; there is a hotel and I have stayed there, and some stores too; there's a grocery store on the lower level. I did some "sightseeing" indoors so to speak; I walked the corridor all the way down through the pool & gym area and the school area.
- ramesh31 5y agoReminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City Can't imagine what it would be like to live in one of these things. Probably the closest we'll ever get to seeing how real life vault dwellers would play out.
- jamiek88 5y agoOr mars colony!
- manholio 5y agoI don't understand high density housing in low density neighborhoods with huge empty lawns. Seems an artificial, Le Corbusier style of utopia where the actual inhabitants are forced to conform to the architect's vision of how they should live. When people want to escape suburbia, the natural higher density option is the 2-3 story terrace, rows of individual homes that share lateral walls and have front access to the street and a back yard. Owning your own personal yard and trees is an immense quality of life factor compared to a cramped apartment and a balcony. The next, even higher density option I've seen in some european cities is to squeeze the frontal street, remove all parking there and move it in the back yards. A concrete slab covers the back parking and the backyard is effectively elevated one flood into the air. This produces a dense, walkable urban environment with comfortable individual houses, each with a lot on the order of 150 square meters (1600 sq feet).
- Elr 5y agoFermont was founded as a company town when they opened the Mont Wright mine and most homes were under the ownership of the company (Québec Cartier back then, now ArcelorMittal). Take this with a grain of salt, but I believe a big percentage of the habitations still are under their ownership. A lot of split houses were built in the last 10 years and if you work for the company and accept to transfer to Fermont, they offer you to live in the house for cheaper and offers you to buy it for a reasonable price after a few years. It is a small compact town, but as soon as you leave, you're in the wilderness. It's paradise.
- TulliusCicero 5y agoYeah the setup they got there is weird. > The next, even higher density option I've seen in some european cities is to squeeze the frontal street, remove all parking there and move it in the back yards. I lived in Munich and it seemed like the default was almost always having underground parking. Our first place was in an apartment complex of maybe 10 units, and it had its own underground parking garage. Next place was a backyard duplex with a 6-unit complex in front, and this combined complex also had an underground parking garage. I'm not sure I've ever seen tiny little underground parking garages like this in the states for small multi-family housing buildings, but in Munich they were everywhere.
- trackofalljades 5y agoIsn't there a podcast episode all about this? I think maybe it was 99pi... ...here we go! https://99percentinvisible.org/article/self-contained-cities-hyperdense-arcologies-urban-fiction-utopian-fantasy/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/self-contained-cities...
- hassancf 5y agoQuebec, that’s America in French. Quebec is NOT a piece of France in America. That’s the mistake lots of people make. I know what I’m talking about. I’m in Quebec.
- not_math 5y agoQuebec was pretty disconnected from France for a long time, and it was not until very recently with Charles de Gaulle that the friendship started again. Now Quebec is more influenced by the European way of living, but there is still a very "American" way of life.
- hassancf 5y agoYes, Quebec was disconnected from France for centuries. Totally agree with that. However, a European way of living in Quebec? Not sure, I agree with that. Sure, there are more bakeries than in neighboring Ontario, but it pretty much stops there.
- sidewndr46 5y agoWasn't de Gaulle banned from Canada _forever_ the one time he came to visit Quebec?
- dirtyid 5y agoI always wonder how much cumulative value has been generated by remote company towns built around resource extraction. Always a marvel to see civilization at work.
- ForHackernews 5y agoReminds me of Whittier, Alaska, another arctic town where almost everyone lives in one building: https://unusualplaces.org/whittier-alaska/ https://unusualplaces.org/whittier-alaska/
- twic 5y agoThere is a more modest wall in Newcastle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byker_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byker_Wall I just measured it on Google Maps as 979 metres long (the Fermont Wall is 1.3 km). Also, i don't think it has continuous internal corridors and extensive commercial space, as Fermont does. It's just an unusually long block of flats. I'm also not sure it's continuous - i think there might be breaks around the swimming pool building. What the two walls have in common is that they were built to protect an enclosed area from an external hazard - in Fermont, it was the wind, but in Byker, it was noise from a proposed motorway which would have run round the estate.
- andreskytt 5y agoVitruvius, “Ten books on architecture”, talks extensively about city design and how to make it so there are no wind corridors. An excellent reading and most relevant to software architecture: he distills things down to basics shared across time and disciplines.