The Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) voted to award the 2015 AIA Gold Medal to Moshe Safdie, FAIA, whose comprehensive and humane approach to designing public and cultural spaces across the world has touched millions of people and influenced generations of younger architects.
The AIA Gold Medal, voted on annually, is considered to be the profession’s highest honor that an individual can receive. The Gold Medal honors an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. Safdie will be honored at the 2015 AIA National Convention in Atlanta.
Born in Haifa, Israel in 1938, Safdie moved with his family to Montreal in 1953. He studied architecture at McGill University, and after graduation worked with AIA Gold Medalist Louis Kahn, FAIA, in Philadelphia. He returned to Montreal to work on Habitat ’67, for Montreal’s 1967 World’s Fair, which consisted of a series of 158 stacked and terraced apartments.
Safdie then began a series of teaching posts that culminated with his appointment as the director of the urban design program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1978-84. Since 1978, Safdie has been based in Boston while remaining a citizen of Israel, Canada, and the United States. Safdie established a Jerusalem office in 1970 and another in Shanghai in 2011.
Many of Safdie’s Asian and Middle Eastern projects exhibit a sense of timelessness closely associated with his mentor, Kahn. Safdie once told Tablet Magazine that if architecture is good, “then it will feel obvious, and like it’s always been there.” In Israel, his Mamilla Center blends in contextually and materially with a 19th century Jerusalem neighborhood, offering people range of dynamic gathering spaces and enhancing the contemporary urban experience.
In Punjab, India, his design for the Khalsa Heritage Centre (a museum of Sikh history and culture) shows visitors an elemental juxtaposition of stone and concrete with water. The building is made up of a rich mix of orthogonal geometry and curvilinear forms, organic and flowing in some places and rigid and rational in others. This mixture alludes to the primeval determination the earliest builders felt when they conspired to put together posts, lintels and right angles in defiant opposition to gravity, and also the natural world they struggled to endure against.
This is a pattern seen throughout Safdie’s architecture: the broad, explicit combination of grid-based forms with fluid curves. Safdie’s work naturally melds opposing forms— fusing arcs into squares, spheres into cubes, and ovals into rectangles—to create emotionally evocative architecture.
In her nomination letter, Boston Society of Architects president Emily Grandstaff-Rice, AIA, wrote: “Moshe Safdie has continued to practice architecture in the purest and most complete sense of the word, without regard for fashion, with a hunger to follow ideals and ideas across the globe in his teaching, writing, practice and research.”
Some of Safdie’s most notable works include:
The Salt Lake City Main Public Library, a triangular glass library intersected by a crescent-shaped wall which forms an urban room and leads visitors up to an observation deck with views of the nearby Wasatch Mountains. The transparency offered by the glass library volume and the gracefully arcing wall and public space it forms evokes a dramatic contrast of enclosure and openness.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem, a concrete prism carved into Mt. Herzl that takes visitors on a linear, narrative journey that explores the individual identities of Holocaust victims, finally giving way to an observation deck with broad views of Jerusalem below, symbolizing the collective future of the Jewish people.
Marina Bay Sands in Singapore is a high-density urban district that serves as a gateway to Singapore, anchors the Singapore waterfront, and provides a dynamic setting for a vibrant public life. The project’s most dramatic feature is the 3-acre SkyPark, which connects the hotel’s three 55-storey towers at the top, spanning from tower to tower and cantilevering 213 feet beyond. Its mixed-use program (theater, museum, hotel, convention center) makes it nearly a city unto itself.
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville Ark., an idyllic village of copper-clad shells containing American art. This village of forms creates a series of dams and bridges over a reservoir fed by nearby Crystal Springs, intimately revealing the natural landscape and huddling around the water like a group of timeworn river stones.
Safdie is the 71st AIA Gold Medalist. He joins the ranks of such visionaries as Thomas Jefferson (1993), Frank Lloyd Wright (1949), Louis Sullivan (1944), Le Corbusier (1961), Louis I. Kahn (1971), I.M. Pei (1979), Thom Mayne (2013), and Julia Morgan (2014). In recognition of his legacy to architecture, his name will be chiseled into the granite Wall of Honor in the lobby of the AIA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Related Stories
MFPRO+ News | Jan 2, 2024
New York City will slash regulations on housing projects
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is expected to cut red tape to make it easier and less costly to build housing projects in the city. Adams would exempt projects with fewer than 175 units in low-density residential areas and those with fewer than 250 units in commercial, manufacturing, and medium- and high-density residential areas from environmental review.
Contractors | Dec 22, 2023
DBIA releases two free DEI resources for AEC firms
The Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) has released two new resources offering guidance and provisions on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on design-build projects.
MFPRO+ News | Dec 22, 2023
Document offers guidance on heat pump deployment for multifamily housing
ICAST (International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology) has released a resource guide to help multifamily owners and managers, policymakers, utilities, energy efficiency program implementers, and others advance the deployment of VHE heat pump HVAC and water heaters in multifamily housing.
Sustainability | Dec 22, 2023
WSP unveils scenario-planning online game
WSP has released a scenario-planning online game to help organizations achieve sustainable development goals while expanding awareness about climate change.
Giants 400 | Dec 20, 2023
Top 160 Apartment and Condominium Architecture Firms for 2023
Gensler, Humphreys and Partners, Solomon Cordwell Buenz, and AO top BD+C's ranking of the nation's largest apartment building and condominium architecture and architecture/engineering (AE) firms for 2023, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2023 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Dec 20, 2023
Top 90 Student Housing Architecture Firms for 2023
Niles Bolton Associates, Solomon Cordwell Buenz, BKV Group, and Humphreys and Partners Architects top BD+C's ranking of the nation's largest student housing facility architecture and architecture/engineering (AE) firms for 2023, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2023 Giants 400 Report.
Healthcare Facilities | Dec 19, 2023
A new hospital in Duluth, Minn., is now the region’s largest healthcare facility
In Duluth, Minn., the new St. Mary’s Medical Center, designed by EwingCole, is now the largest healthcare facility in the region. The hospital consolidates Essentia Health’s healthcare services under one roof. At about 1 million sf spanning two city blocks, St. Mary’s overlooks Lake Superior, providing views on almost every floor of the world’s largest freshwater lake.
Government Buildings | Dec 19, 2023
New Pennsylvania State Archives building holds documents dating back to 1680
Work was recently completed on a new Pennsylvania State Archives building in Harrisburg, Penn. The HGA-designed, 146,000-sf facility offers numerous amenities, including computers, scanners, printers, a kitchenette with seating, lockers, a meeting room, a classroom, an interactive video wall, gallery, and all-gender restrooms. The features are all intended to provide a welcoming and comfortable environment for visitors.
Urban Planning | Dec 18, 2023
The impacts of affordability, remote work, and personal safety on urban life
Data from Gensler's City Pulse Survey shows that although people are satisfied with their city's experience, it may not be enough.
MFPRO+ News | Dec 18, 2023
Berkeley, Calif., raises building height limits in downtown area
Facing a severe housing shortage, the City of Berkeley, Calif., increased the height limits on residential buildings to 12 stories in the area close to the University of California campus.