Moshe Safdie first established his architectural practice in 1964 in Montreal to design and supervise the construction of Habitat '67. Today the principal office is in Boston, Massachusetts, with branch offices in Jerusalem and Toronto. The firm provides a full range of urban planning and architectural services, as well as interior design. Currently, the firm is engaged in activities ranging from the design of public institutions - including museums, performing arts centers, libraries, and university campuses - to the design of airports, housing, mixed-use complexes, and new communities.
Moshe Safdie received a lifetime achievement award from the Yivo Institute in May of 2003. The firm has won numerous awards for its designs, including the Governor General's Medal for Architecture of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (1992) and the Prix d'Excellence en Architecture by the Ordre des Architectes du QuŽbec (1988) for the QuŽbec Museum of Civilization; the Rechter Prize of the Association of Architects and City Planners of Israel (1982) for the Hosh Complex; the Urban Design Concept Award by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (1980) for Coldspring New Town; and the Massey Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (1967) for Habitat '67. Moshe Safdie and Associates does not participate in unsolicited awards programs such as the AIA awards.
Design Philosophy:
"A work of architecture must give expression to the life for which it was intended; it must not only competently satisfy the requirements of the program, but its form should resonate with the diverse spaces and activities it contains. We conceive of architecture as a natural extension of its surroundings, urban or rural, ancient or entirely new, and recognize its responsibility to contribute richly to its setting and enduringly to its community. In places as diverse geographically and culturally as Canada and Mexico, Los Angeles and Jerusalem, and Singapore and Boston, an appreciation of the site and region's landscape, climate, and heritage has deepened and enriched our design and construction process.
Contemporary architecture often lacks the qualities of ritual and ceremony that have historically been fundamental to civic, cultural, and religious life. A central goal of our work is to create unique spaces and forms that introduce a sense of ceremony appropriate to each particular project.
Because people have always derived the greatest pleasure from architecture by recognizing the way in which real materials come together in a building, we strive to create buildings that are unified expressions of their technology and construction materials as well as their settings and purpose. We believe that the qualities of rich and textured detail we associate with architecture of the past can develop today from careful, innovative methods of construction and that the greatest ornament in architecture depends upon an appreciation of its making - whether by hand or the machine."
May 26, 2003
Moshe Safdie arcspace features