Moshe Safdie

Moshe Safdie
Moshe Safdie
Born	July 14, 1938 (1938-07-14) (age 73) Haifa, British Mandate of Palestine
Nationality	Israeli/Canadian/American
Awards	Order of Canada Gold Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada
Work
Practice	Safdie Architects
Buildings	Habitat 67, Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum, Salt Lake City Main Public Library

Moshe Safdie, CC, FAIA (born July 14, 1938) is an architect, urban designer, educator, theorist, and author. Born in the city of Haifa, then Palestine and now Israel, he moved with his family to Montreal, Canada, when he was 15 years old.

Career

Safdie graduated from McGill University, with a degree in architecture, in 1961. After apprenticing with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, he returned to Montreal to oversee the master plan for Expo '67. In 1964, he established his own firm to undertake Habitat '67, an adaptation of his McGill thesis. Habitat '67, which pioneered the design and implementation of three-dimensional, prefabricated units for living, was a central feature of Expo '67 and an important development in architectural history. He was awarded the 1967 Construction Man of the Year Award from the Engineering News Record and the Massey Medal for Architecture in Canada for Habitat '67.^[1]

In 1970, Safdie opened a branch office in Jerusalem, starting an involvement with the rebuilding of that city that eventually included the Yitzhak Rabin Center and the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum. In 1978, after teaching at McGill, Ben Gurion, and Yale universities, Safdie moved his main office to Boston and became director of the Urban Design Program at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, until 1984. From 1984 to 1989, he was the Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Harvard. Since the early 1990s, Safdie, a citizen of Canada, Israel, and the United States, has focused on his architectural practice, Safdie Architects, which is based in Boston and has branches in Toronto, Jerusalem, and Singapore. In that time, Safdie has designed six of Canada's principal public institutions as well as many other notable projects around the world, including the Salt Lake City Main Public Library, the Khalsa Heritage Centre in India, the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort in Singapore, the United States Institute of Peace headquarters in Washington, DC, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Personal life

Safdie married his first wife, Nina Nusynowicz, in 1959. The couple had a daughter, Taal, in 1961, and a son, Oren, in 1965. His son Oren is a playwright, based in California and Canada. His daughter Taal is an architect in San Diego, and partner of the husband-wife firm Safdie Rabines Architects. In 1981, Safdie married Michal Ronnen, a photographer, with whom he has two daughters, Carmelle and Yasmin. Carmelle Safdie is an artist, and Yasmin Safdie is a social worker.

Selected architectural projects

Moshe Safdie's works are known for their dramatic curves, arrays of geometric patterns, use of windows, and key placement of open and green spaces. His writings and designs stress the need to create meaningful, vital, and inclusive spaces that enhance community, with special attention to the essence of a particular locale, geography, and culture.

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  Habitat 67, Montreal, Canada

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  Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, California

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  Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts

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  Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

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  Rabin Centre

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  Musée de la Civilisation

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  Yad Vashem Jerusalem, Israel

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  The Class of 1959 Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts

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  Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, Israel

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  Ottawa City Hall, Ottawa, Ontario

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  National Gallery of Canada

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  Salt Lake City Public Library

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  Vancouver Library Square, Vancouver, British Columbia

• Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
• United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.
• Marina Bay Sands, Singapore's second integrated resort and casino
• Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas City, Missouri
• The Exploration Place Science Museum in Wichita, Kansas
• Asian University for Women, Chittagong, Bangladesh^[2]
• 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 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, 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
• Terminal 1, Toronto Pearson International Airport, with Skidmore Owings Merrill
• The Class of 1959 Chapel, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Yitzhak Rabin Center, Tel Aviv, Israel
• The campus of Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts
• The Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
• Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts^[3]
• Eleanor Roosevelt College campus, UC San Diego
• Coldspring New Town, Baltimore, Maryland
• Headquarters for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Washington, D.C.
• United States Federal Courthouse, District of Massachusetts, Springfield, Massachusetts
• The Esplanade condominium complex in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Pantages Tower, Toronto, Ontario
• Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas City, MO. September 2011

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]
• Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie (2010)

Selected awards

• Companion of the Order of Canada
• Gold Medal, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada
• Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence
• Mt. Scopus Award for Humanitarianism, Jerusalem

References

1. ^ Pound, Richard W. (2005). 'Fitzhenry and Whiteside Book of Canadian Facts and Dates'. Fitzhenry and Whiteside. 
2. ^ http://www.asian-university.org/campus/plan.htm
3. ^ Peabody Essex Museum

External links

• The Safdie Hypermedia Archive-- McGill Univ.
• Safdie Architects
• CBC Digital archives-- "Moshe Safdie: Hero of Habitat"
• Moshe Safdie at the TED (conference) , 2002
• Fallout Zvi Elhyani, Maayan Magazine, 2005
• Power People: Moshe Safdie Zvi Elhyani, Volume, 2005
• Salt Lake City Library on ARCHUtah
• Interview on Charlie Rose August 23, 2011
• Kauffmann Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas City, MO

Persondata
Name	Safdie, Moshe
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	July 14, 1938
Place of birth	Haifa, British Mandate of Palestine
Date of death
Place of death