Moshe Safdie

From Free net encyclopedia

Moshe Safdie, CC, B.Arch, LL.D. , F.R.A.I.C., FAIA (born July 14, 1938) is an architect and urban designer. He was born in the town of Haifa in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, now Israel. He moved with his family to Montreal, Canada when he was a teenager, a move he disliked as a dedicated Zionist and socialist.

An excellent student, he studied architectural engineering at McGill University and apprenticed under Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. At age twenty-four his master's thesis was selected to be constructed as part of the Expo '67 celebration. The Habitat 67 project, a complex of cellular residences that could be lifted into place like LEGO blocks, made him known around the world. In 1967, he returned to Israel, where he was part of the team that refurnished Old Jerusalem. He lives in a renovated home in the old city and has dual Israeli-Canadian citizenship.

In 1976, he became a professor at Harvard University and set up his firm's head office in nearby Somerville, Massachusetts, where it remains today. The company also has offices in Toronto and Jerusalem. In 1986, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 2005.

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