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Moshe Safdie

CC FRAIC OAA FAIA
משה ספדיה
Moshe Safdie by Michal Ronnen Safdie (cropped).jpg
Safdie in 2017
Born (1938-07-14) July 14, 1938 (age 87)
Haifa, Mandatory Palestine
Nationality
  • Israeli
  • Canadian
  • American
Alma mater McGill School of Architecture
Occupation Architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, author
Spouse(s)
Nina Nusynowicz
​
​
(m. 1959; div. 1981)​
Michal Ronnen
​
(m. 1981)​
Children 4, including Oren
Awards
See list:
Gold Medal, American Institute of Architects
Companion of the Order of Canada
Gold Medal, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada
Lifetime Achievement, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Wolf Prize
Practice Safdie Architects (est. 1964)
Projects
See list:
Habitat 67
Marina Bay Sands
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Virasat-e-Khalsa
Jewel Changi Airport

Moshe Safdie (born July 14, 1938) is a famous architect, city planner, teacher, and writer. He is known for designing buildings that are good for people and the environment. He has worked for over 60 years. His projects include museums, schools, public parks, homes, city centers, and airports. He has also planned new cities and improved old ones in the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia.

Safdie is most famous for designing Marina Bay Sands and Jewel Changi Airport. He also designed his first big project, Habitat 67. This building started as an idea for his college project at McGill University. Moshe Safdie is a citizen of Israel, Canada, and the United States.

Early Life and School Days

Safdie was born in Haifa, Palestine. His family was Syrian Jewish. His father was from Aleppo, and his mother's family was also from Aleppo, but she was born in Manchester. When he was nine, Israel became an independent country. After a war in 1948, he lived on a kibbutz, which is a community farm. There, he took care of goats and bees.

In 1953, Israel faced money problems. This made it hard for Safdie's father to run his textile business. So, when Moshe was 15, his family moved from Israel to Montreal, Canada. He went to Westmount High School there.

In 1955, Safdie started studying architecture at McGill University. In his fifth year, he was named a University Scholar. The next summer, he won a scholarship to travel across North America. He studied how different cities built homes. For his final project, he designed a new way to build homes called "A Case for City Living." He finished his degree in 1961.

Two years later, while working with architect Louis Kahn, Safdie's old teacher asked him to show his building idea for the World's Fair of 1967. His idea became a real building in Montreal, called Habitat 67.

Building a Career

In 1964, Safdie started his own company, Safdie Architects, in Montreal. This was to work on Habitat 67, which was based on his college project. Canada chose Habitat 67 as a main part of Expo 67. This project showed how to build homes using ready-made parts that fit together like blocks. Safdie designed Habitat 67 like a neighborhood. It had open spaces, gardens, and other things usually found in single-family homes, but in a tall city building.

Habitat 67 (8126451745)
Habitat 67, in Montreal, looks like stacked blocks.

In 1970, Safdie opened an office in Jerusalem. He wanted to combine new building ideas with respect for history. He helped restore the Old City and built Mamilla Mall, which connects the old and new parts of Jerusalem. Other important buildings he designed in Israel include the New City of Modi’in, the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum, and the Yitzhak Rabin Center. He also worked on Ben Gurion International Airport and the National Campus for the Archeology of Israel. During this time, Safdie also worked with leaders in Senegal and Iran.

Later, Safdie designed public buildings in Canada. These include the National Gallery of Canada, the Quebec Museum of Civilization, and Vancouver Library Square. Other famous cultural buildings he designed are the Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex in India, the United States Institute of Peace Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas.

Safdie has also worked on large projects in growing economies. These projects were built quickly and were very big. Examples include Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, which is a resort with a famous Skypark. He also designed Jewel Changi Airport, a new type of airport that combines shopping with a garden. Another big project is Raffles City Chongqing in China. This building has homes, offices, shops, and hotels. To connect four towers in Chongqing, China, he designed a "Horizontal Skyscraper" sky bridge. Safdie and his team use sky bridges to make tall buildings easier to get around.

Safdie Architects Today

Today, Safdie Architects has its main office in Somerville, Massachusetts, near Harvard University. They also have offices in Jerusalem, Toronto, Shanghai, and Singapore. The company is run by partners.

Safdie created a research program within his company. This program lets people explore new design ideas outside of normal project work. These researchers work with Safdie and other leaders to create new plans. They get paid and can use all the company's resources. Past research topics include "Habitat of the Future" and "Tall Buildings in the city."

In December 2023, Safdie Architects stopped working on a hotel project in Jerusalem. This was because of problems with the land agreement. There was an attack on Armenian community members at the site. The Armenian church said that the client for the project was behind the attack.

Teaching and Academia

After teaching at McGill, Ben Gurion, and Yale universities, Safdie became the Director of the Urban Design Program at Harvard University in 1978. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts, for this role. He was the Director until 1984. From 1984 to 1989, he was a special professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Harvard. Safdie still works closely with Harvard, often teaching design classes.

Personal Life

In 1959, Safdie married Nina Nusynowicz. She was a Polish-Israeli survivor of the Holocaust. They had two children, a daughter and a son. Both were born while Habitat 67 was being built. Just before Habitat 67 opened, Safdie and his family moved into the building. Safdie and Nusynowicz divorced in 1981. His daughter, Taal, is an architect in San Diego. His son, Oren, writes plays, some of which are about architecture. Moshe Safdie's great-nephews, Josh and Benny, are independent filmmakers.

In 1981, Safdie married Michal Ronnen. She is a photographer from Jerusalem. Safdie and Ronnen have two daughters, Carmelle and Yasmin. Carmelle is an artist, and Yasmin is a social worker.

Awards and Honors

Moshe Safdie has received many awards for his work. Here are some of them:

Exhibitions of His Work

Safdie's architectural work has been shown in many exhibitions:

  • 2017: Habitat 67 vers l’avenir: The Shape of Things to Come at Université du Québec à Montréal
  • 2010–2014: Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie at the National Gallery of Canada and other museums.
  • 2012–2013: Moshe Safdie: The Path to Crystal Bridges at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
  • 2004: An Architect's Vision: Moshe Safdie’s Jepson Center for the Arts at the Telfair Museum of Art
  • 2003–2004: Building a New Museum at the Peabody Essex Museum
  • 1973–1974: For Everyone A Garden, a traveling exhibit shown in Baltimore, Ottawa, and San Francisco.

Films About Moshe Safdie

Several films have been made about Moshe Safdie and his work:

  • 2020: "Moshe Safdie: Another Dimension of Architecture" by I-Talk Productions
  • 2018: "Time Space Existence" by Plane-Site
  • 2004: "Moshe Safdie: The Power of Architecture" directed by Donald Winkler
  • 2003: "My Architect: A Son’s Journey" directed by Nathaniel Kahn

Moshe Safdie Archive

The Moshe Safdie Archive is a huge collection of his architectural work. He gave it to McGill University in 1990. It has materials from 235 projects, showing his career from his first college papers to his current projects. The collection includes over 140,000 drawings, more than 200 models, project files, videos, and over 100,000 photos. It also has 215 personal sketchbooks. Researchers can look at these materials at the McGill University Library.

Important Projects

Here are some of Moshe Safdie's most important projects:

Books by Moshe Safdie

Moshe Safdie has also written several books about architecture and cities:

  • With Intention to Build: The Unrealized Concepts, Ideas, and Dreams of Moshe Safdie (2020)
  • The City After the Automobile: An Architect's Vision (1997)
  • Jerusalem: The Future of the Past (1989)
  • Beyond Habitat by 20 Years (1987)
  • For Everyone A Garden (1974)
  • Beyond Habitat (1970)
  • Habitat (1967)

Books About Safdie

Many books have been written about Moshe Safdie and his architectural designs:

  • Jewel Changi Airport (2020)
  • Safdie (2014)
  • Reaching for the Sky: The Marina Bay Sands Singapore (2013)
  • Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie (2007)
  • Yad Vashem: Moshe Safdie – The Architecture of Memory (2006)
  • Moshe Safdie: Buildings and Projects, 1967–1992 (1996)

Images for kids

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Moshe Safdie para niños

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