Moshe Safdie

For more information on Moshe Safdie, visit Britannica.com.

(b Haifa, Palestine [now Israel], 14 July 1938). Canadian-Israeli architect. When he was 15 his family moved to Canada where he later studied at McGill University school of architecture (1955-61), Montreal, under the guidance of H. P. D. Van Ginkel. In his thesis, Three Dimensional Modular Building System of 1960 (recalling Le Corbusier's 'plug-in concept'), he clearly drew on his early childhood experience combined with the ideas of modern architecture. During his apprenticeship with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia (1962-3), Safdie was impressed by Kahn's integral use of composition, building materials, space and daylight to create structures that monumentalized the characteristics of regional forms. Also in Philadelphia he had his first introduction to the work of D'Arcy Thompson and his morphological theories of vernacular architecture. Both of these philosophies profoundly influenced Safdie's future works.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Israeli-Canadian architect. He worked (1962–3) with L. I. Kahn before setting up his own practice in Montréal, Canada, in 1964. He established his reputation with the ‘Habitat’ housing-scheme at Expo 67, Montréal, in which the parts were given expression and composed like a pile of building-blocks to form the whole. The antithesis of the Corbusian insistence on slab-like forms, it drew on Mediterranean vernacular architecture to create a new paradigmatic megastructure built of prefabricated parts. His subsequent works also explored vernacular elements (e.g. the Habitat for San Juan, Puerto Rico (1968–72)). He designed (with Parkin Associates) the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1993–8). Among his other works may be mentioned the Hebrew Union College Campus (1972–8); the Children's Holocaust Memorial (1976–87) and Holocaust Transport Memorial (1994—featur-ing a railway-wagon used to carry Jews to their deaths), both at Vad Vashem, and the Mamilla Centre (1975–96), all in Jerusalem; the Museum of Civilization, Québec, Canada (1981–6); an extension to the Montréal Museum (1987–92); the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA (1985–95); the Rosovsky Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (1991–4); the Library Square and Federal Tower, Vancouver, Canada (1992–5); and the new town of Modi, Israel (from 1989). Among his publications may be mentioned Beyond Habitat (1970), For Everyone a Garden (1974), Form and Purpose (1982), and Jerusalem: The Future of the Past (1989).

Bibliography

• Drew (1972)
• Kalman (1994)
• Heathcote (1999)
• Kalman (1994)
• Kohn (ed.) (1996)
• Zantovska Mu (ed.) (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Moshe Safdie
Moshe Safdie
Personal information
Name	Moshe Safdie
Nationality	Israeli/Canadian/American
Birth date	July 14, 1938 (1938-07-14) (age 71)
Birth place	Haifa, British Mandate of Palestine
Alma mater	McGill University 1961
Work
Practice name	Moshe Safdie and Associates
Significant buildings	Habitat 67, Vancouver Public Library
Awards and prizes	Order of Canada Gold Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada

Habitat 67 in Montreal, Quebec.

Vancouver Library Square is one of Safdie's most recent Canadian commissions, and one of his most popular

Model of the Marina Bay Sands

The Children's Monument at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem designed by architect Moshe Safdie

Moshe Safdie, CC, FAIA (born July 14, 1938) is an architect and urban designer. He was born in the city of Haifa, British Mandate for Palestine. He moved with his family to Montreal, Canada when he was 15 years old.

Contents 1 Career 2 Architectural projects 3 Publications 3.1 Safdie 3.2 Others 4 References 5 External links

Career

An excellent student, he studied architecture at McGill University and apprenticed under Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. At age 24, his master's thesis was selected to be constructed as part of the Expo 67 celebration. The Habitat 67 project, a complex of cellular residences that could be lifted into place like Lego blocks, propelled him onto the world stage. In 1967, he returned to Israel, where he was part of the team that refurnished Old Jerusalem. He now resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has Canadian, Israeli, and United States citizenship.

In 1978, he became Director of the Urban Design Program and the Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. His company, Moshe Safdie and Associates, Inc. is based out of Somerville, Massachusetts with branch offices in Toronto and Jerusalem.

His son Oren Safdie is a playwright.

His daughter Taal, is an architect in San Diego, and partner of the husband-wife firm, Safdie Rabines Architects.

His nephew is Dov Charney, founder of the clothing company American Apparel.

Architectural projects

Moshe Safdie's works are known for their dramatic curves, arrays of simple geometric patterns, and usage of windows and open spaces.

• Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex, Anandpur Sahib, Punjab, India
• Habitat 67 at Expo 67 World's Fair, Montreal, Quebec
• Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, California
• Telfair Museum of Art, Jepson Center for the Arts, Savannah, Georgia
• The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
• City plan for the city of Modi'in, Israel
• Former Ottawa City Hall, Ottawa, Ontario
• Several major buildings, including the new central museum, opened 2005, at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel
• Hebrew Union College, first phase and Merkaz Shimshon expansion, Jerusalem, Israel
• Mamilla Centre and David's Village, Jerusalem, Israel
• Vancouver Library Square, Vancouver, British Columbia
• The Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts, Vancouver, British Columbia
• Main Branch of the Salt Lake City Public Library, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Airside building of Terminal 3, Ben Gurion International Airport, Israel
• Marina Bay Sands, Singapore's first integrated resort and casino
• Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas City, Missouri
• West Edge, Kansas City, Missouri
• Terminal 1, Toronto Pearson International Airport, with Skidmore Owings Merrill
• The Class of 1959 Chapel, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• The Grave of Yitzhak and Leah Rabin
• The campus of Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts
• The Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
• The 2003, $190+ million redesign of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts^[1]
• Eleanor Roosevelt College campus, UC San Diego
• Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (scheduled to open in 2010)
• United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. (under construction for completion in 2010)
• The Exploration Place Science Museum in Wichita, Kansas
• Coldspring New Town, Baltimore, Maryland
• Headquarters for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Washington, D.C.

Publications

Safdie

• Beyond Habitat (1970)
• For Everyone A Garden (1974)
• Form & Purpose (1982)
• Beyond Habitat by 20 Years (1987)
• Jerusalem: The Future of the Past (1989)
• The City After the Automobile: An Architect's Vision (1998) [1]
• Yad Vashem - The Architecture of Memory (2006)[2]

Others

• Moshe Safdie Volume I (1st edition 1996/2nd edition 2009) [3]
• Moshe Safdie Volume II (2009) [4]

References

1. ^ Peabody Esseex Museum

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Moshe Safdie

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Moshe Safdie

• The Safdie Hypermedia Archive-- McGill Univ.
• Moshe Safdie and Associates
• CBC Digital archives-- "Moshe Safdie: Hero of Habitat"
• Rabin awaits Safdie, Maayan Magazine, 2006.
• Moshe Safdie at the TED (conference) , 2002
• [894/ Interview with Safdie in The LEaf Review
• Fallout Zvi Elhyani, Maayan Magazine, 2005
• Power People: Moshe Safdie Zvi Elhyani, Volume, 2005

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