Moshe Safdie - Architecture Career

Architecture Career

After apprenticing with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie returned to Montreal to oversee the master plan for Expo 67. In 1964, he established his own firm to undertake Habitat 67, an adaptation of his McGill thesis. Habitat 67, which pioneered the design and implementation of three-dimensional, prefabricated units for living, was a central feature of Expo 67 and an important development in architectural history. He was awarded the 1967 Construction Man of the Year Award from the Engineering News Record and the Massey Medal for Architecture in Canada for Habitat 67.

In 1970, Safdie opened a branch office in Jerusalem, which recently closed. Among the projects he has designed in Jerusalem are Yad Vashem and Mamilla Mall. In 1978, after teaching at McGill, Ben Gurion, and Yale universities, Safdie moved his main office to Boston and became director of the Urban Design Program at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, until 1984. From 1984 to 1989, he was the Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Harvard. Since the early 1990s, Safdie, a citizen of Canada, Israel, and the United States, has focused on his architectural practice, Safdie Architects, which is based in Boston and has branches in Toronto, Jerusalem, and Singapore. Safdie has designed six of Canada's principal public institutions as well as many other notable projects around the world, including the Salt Lake City Main Public Library, the Khalsa Heritage Centre in India, the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort in Singapore, the United States Institute of Peace headquarters in Washington, DC, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.