Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author, with American, Canadian, and Israeli citizenship.
24 Facts About Moshe Safdie
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Moshe Safdie is known for incorporating principles of socially responsible design in his 50-year career.
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Moshe Safdie's projects include cultural, educational, and civic institutions; neighborhoods and public parks; housing; mixed-use urban centers; airports; and master plans for existing communities and entirely new cities in North and South America, the Middle East, and Asia.
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Moshe Safdie is most identified with designing Marina Bay Sands and Jewel Changi Airport, as well as his debut project, Habitat 67, originally conceived as his thesis at McGill University.
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Moshe Safdie was born in Haifa, British Mandate of Palestine, in 1938, to a family of Syrian-Jewish and Lebanese-Jewish descent.
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Moshe Safdie was nine years old and still living in Haifa when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on May 14,1948.
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Moshe Safdie lived on a kibbutz, working in the countryside.
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Consequently, when Moshe Safdie was 15, his family emigrated to Montreal.
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Moshe Safdie traveled across North America to observe housing developments in major cities.
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Two years later, while apprenticing with Louis Kahn, Moshe Safdie was invited by his thesis advisor, Sandy van Ginkel, to submit his modular project for the World Exposition of 1967, to be held in Montreal.
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In 1964, Moshe Safdie established Moshe Safdie Architects in Montreal to undertake work on Habitat 67, an adaptation of his thesis at McGill University.
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Moshe Safdie designed the complex as a neighborhood with open spaces, garden terraces, and many other amenities typically reserved for the single-family home and adapted to a high-density urban environment.
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In 1970, Moshe Safdie established a branch office of his practice in Jerusalem.
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Moshe Safdie worked on the restoration of the Old City and the construction of Mamilla Center, linking old and new cities.
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Later, Moshe Safdie received commissions for public buildings in Canada: the National Gallery of Canada, the Quebec Museum of Civilization, and Vancouver Library Square.
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Moshe Safdie has worked on projects in emerging markets, and brought projects to completion in shorter periods, at larger scales.
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Today, Moshe Safdie Architects is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, with offices in Jerusalem, Toronto, Shanghai, and Singapore.
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Moshe Safdie formed a research program within his office to pursue the advanced investigation of design topics.
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In 1978, after teaching at McGill, Ben Gurion, and Yale universities, Moshe Safdie was appointed Director of the Urban Design Program at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and moved to Boston, Massachusetts.
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Moshe Safdie continues to work closely with the GSD, frequently teaching design studio; Notably, Rethinking the Humanist High-Rise and Rethinking Hudson Yards.
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In 1959, Moshe Safdie married Nina Nusynowicz, a Polish-Israeli Holocaust survivor.
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Moshe Safdie's daughter Taal is an architect in San Diego, a partner of the firm Safdie Rabines Architects; Moshe Safdie's son Oren is a playwright who has written several plays about architecture.
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In 1981, Moshe Safdie married Michal Ronnen, a Jerusalem-born photographer and daughter of artist Vera Ronnen.
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The Moshe Safdie Archive, donated to McGill University by the architect in 1990, is one of the most extensive individual collections of architectural documentation in Canada.