- Safdie, Moshe
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Israeli-Canadian architect.Educated at McGill University School of Architecture, Montreal, he began his career in the offices of Louis Kahn. His Habitat '67 was a bold experiment in prefabricated housing using modular units; the design was for a prefabricated concrete housing complex of individual apartment units stacked irregularly along a zigzagged framework that was evocative of an Italian hill town or a pueblo. This aroused intense international interest but failed to catch on as a low-cost housing construction method. Later works include Yeshivat Porat Joseph Rabbinical College in Jerusalem (1971–79) and Coldspring New Town near Baltimore (1971). He served as director of urban design at Harvard University, 1978–84.
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▪ Canadian-Israeli architectborn July 14, 1938, Haifa, Palestine [now in Israel]Canadian-Israeli architect who designed Habitat '67 at the site of Expo 67, a year-long international exhibition at Montreal. Habitat '67 was a prefabricated concrete housing complex comprising three clusters of individual apartment units arranged like irregularly stacked blocks along a zigzagged framework. This bold experiment in prefabricated housing using modular units aroused intense international interest at the time, though it failed to inaugurate a trend toward the mass production of such low-cost units.Educated at McGill University School of Architecture in Montreal, Safdie began his career (1962) in the offices of Philadelphia architect Louis I. Kahn. He subsequently opened his own architectural offices in Montreal, Jerusalem, and Boston. Early works by Safdie include Habitat Puerto Rico (1968–72), a modular housing system in San Juan; Yeshivat Porat Joseph Rabbinical College, with dormitories, teaching facilities, library, and synagogue, in Jerusalem (1971–79); Coldspring New Town, commissioned by the city of Baltimore, a plan for a new town, including residences and related public and service buildings (1971); and Wailing Wall Plaza, in the Old City, Jerusalem (1974). Safdie became professor of urban design and director of the urban design centre of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1978.His later projects include, at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, a children's Holocaust memorial (completed 1987), a transport memorial (completed 1995), and a Holocaust museum (completed 2005)—as well as the Telfair Museum of Art (completed 2006) in Savannah, Ga., U.S., and an expansion of the Lester B. Pearson Airport in Toronto, Ont., Can. With offices in Boston, Jerusalem, and Toronto in the early 21st century, Safdie had projects in Israel, China, the United States, Singapore, and Bangladesh.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
