The Third Church of Christ, Scientist, one of the few notable buildings near the White House, was torn down in 2014, even though it had once been described by the architectural historian Richard Longstreth as “an enduring monument to the human faith in God and the extraordinary power with which that faith can be expressed.” But the church’s parishioners didn’t share his faith in Brutalism and started describing their home as a “bunker”— the standard insult that just about every cast-concrete building has suffered at one time or another. (“How do you live with all that cement,” my schoolmates would ask. “With delight” was the only answer. They understood once they visited.)

If only those Brutalist structures could have held on just a bit longer. The style’s charms are being rediscovered. If it is true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Habitat’s concrete should be blushing.

“In the schools, you see that the students are into it again,” said Moshe Safdie, Habitat’s designer, speaking by phone from his firm’s offices near Boston. “Several of my peers are doing buildings influenced by it.”

Mr. Safdie is now one of the world’s leading architects, but he conceived of his Expo project while still a student at McGill University. He was all of 28 when it opened. He said that after a 50-year career spent designing institutions (the Crystal Bridges museum in Arkansas is a recent standout), contracts for housing are pouring in for the first time, “and it’s completely linked to people’s interest in Habitat.” His student project, he said, feels “as though it was built yesterday.”

Its current imitators seem to agree. A vast new complex planned for downtown Toronto, with a haphazard-looking stack of blocky modules, is utterly indebted to the Safdie building. Its cutting-edge architect, Bjarke Ingels of Denmark, has referred to it as “Habitat 2.0” and he ended a recent speech with an admission of influence that is rare in his profession: “Canada started something 50 years ago. Now we are picking up where Moshe Safdie left off.”