Moshe Safdie

Founding Partner, Safdie Architects · Architect of Habitat '67 and Marina Bay Sands · Recipient, 2015 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal

Inquire to book

Moshe Safdie designed Habitat '67, Marina Bay Sands and Jewel Changi Airport. Now he shows leaders and city builders how humane design can make dense urban life livable, connected and worth returning to.

Sustainability & ESG Corporate Sustainability

Somerville, United States

Videos

Watch Moshe in Action

Moshe Safdie: Building uniqueness | TED Talk (Video)

Montreal's Iconic Brutalist Building Has Finally Been Finished Inside Unreal Engine (with Video)

Renowned Architect Moshe Safdie Donates His Archive and Habitat 67 Apartment to McGill University (Video)

Bio

About Moshe Safdie

Moshe Safdie has spent his career testing a single conviction: that a building succeeds when it serves the people inside it. "If you can identify completely with those who will live, work and be [in that building]," he says, "you are half way to victory."

Born in Israel, Safdie earned his architecture degree from McGill University. After apprenticing with the American architect Louis I. Kahn, he returned to Montreal to oversee the master plan for the 1967 World Exhibition and to realize Habitat '67, an adaptation of his McGill thesis that became a central feature of the exhibition and launched his international career. His work since spans cultural, educational and civic institutions, neighborhoods, public parks, resorts, urban centers and airports across Israel, Canada, China, India and the United States.

Topics

Moshe's Keynote Topics

Fitness to purpose, in the Darwinian sense, has long been an underlying theme for architecture. From the earliest human-made shelters to the sophisticated structures of vernacular and ceremonial architecture, the search for perfect fitness has addressed many issues: using available materials and construction methods innovatively; responding to site and local climatic conditions; creating spaces which fit the lifestyle and the rituals of cultural and religious life. The exploration for fitness to purpose must be at the center of architectural invention, says Moshe Safdie; architecture cannot be independent of place, and the notion that there are universal solutions that fit all is a myth. How do we to create an architecture of belonging in the era of globalization? It must be particular, not general, and should draw on specificity of place (context, urban or rural, land, flora, fauna, essence of culture). From Safdie’s first visit to China in 1973, and his work around the globe in the subsequent years of practice, this responsiveness to cultural relevance has taken him across four continents, from the Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic, to the developing world, throughout Europe and the Americas, to the rapidly changing Asian landscape.

It has been 100 years since the first skyscraper was built and we still have no idea how to deploy it as an urban building block. As a profession, we are obsessed with the tower as an object – an urban sculpture – with little focus on collective space or quality of life in towers, believes Moshe Safdie. The 20th and 21st centuries have brought demographic shifts, exploding populations, the extraordinary concentration of tens of millions in urban centers, and taller and taller buildings served by ever-expanding mobility and communication systems. With this new reality, a world in which the dominant building type is the high-rise building, the very foundation of human environmental aspirations is threatened: light, air, a sense of identity, contact with nature, privacy and the sense of community. Safdie delves deep into why we must employ new architectural and urban design inventions – those which transcend individual buildings – to maintain and enhance the fundamental aspirations so essential to the human spirit. Moving beyond sheer market forces, he urges the architectural profession to respond to these imperatives to create a new kind of public realm that mitigates and humanizes the megascale city.

With the new densities seen in cities across the world, the private automobile is not sustainable. For walkable places of rich interaction, we must start with urban transportation. There has never been a major change in city structures without a corresponding revolution in transit, from the advancement of the urban rail system in the 1850s to the private automobile in the 1920s. We are just beginning to think about how we can replace the automobile and revolutionize how we use it. Moshe Safdie’s book, “The City After the Automobile,” led to a research fellowship in the office: Mobility on-Demand and the Redesigned City. He discusses this research, showing that if we were to plan our cities with the idea of using the automobile as a utility on demand, similar to the proliferation of city bikes on demand, we can open the possibility of new interfaces – reducing cars by 70% and parking areas over 50%. He explains why this has great potential, with rapidly developing new technologies and innovations, for our ability to reclaim and reimagine the public realm.

Research & Writing