Moshe safdie biography graphic organizer

A Companion of the Order of Canada, Moshe Safdie's architectural designs include residential housing, galleries, fine arts complexes, parks, airports, museums, colleges, libraries, government buildings, memorials, masterplans and multi-use complexes. Safdie's influence is wide reaching, covering nearly projects on five continents. He was educated at McGill University, where he graduated in Although based in Boston, Massachusetts, since , Safdie has continued to design Canadian projects.

His increasing interest in historical, formal and contextual issues is evident in his Canadian designs from the s on, such as the major expansion of Ottawa City Hall , which respects the much admired earlier building designed by Rother, Bland and Trudeau in , and his design for Vancouver Library Square.

Over more than five decades, legendary architect Moshe Safdie has designed and built some of the world's most talked-about and memorable structures - from.

The latter confronts the clutter of a decayed downtown setting with a powerful elliptical form reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum. Curving doubled and windowed walls enclose a covered plaza with shops and the library entrance, as well as the rectangular library building itself. The library building, set within the elliptical enclosure, contrasts a modernist glass and metal vocabulary with the attached columns and horizontal bands, which articulate the curved brown concrete walls to give it a distinctly archaic character.

This collection of large public buildings use extensive glazed areas, emphasizing Safdie's belief that light in architecture is integral and has a value beyond the functional, blending the interior with the exterior and inviting those outside in. Among his latest such Canadian projects is a major residential project for Toronto, Parkside Residential Development.

This mixed-use complex, which has been referred to as a colossal Stonehenge, contains a storey hotel, convention centre and exhibition facilities, while its profile appears as though a gigantic canoe or curved sled has been perched atop three unconventional, curved towers.

Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, and author born in in Haifa, Israel.

This international portfolio has allowed him to exploree his design ideas on unprecedented scales. Beginning with Habitat 67, and developing into lighter and more economical versions, Safdie has explored prefabricated concrete assemblies of cellular multi-unit housing. These cellular units create diverse, irregular, informal groupings; the images created recall the medieval hill towns of Europe and the densely packed traditional cities of North Africa and the Middle East.

Safdie refined this type of community building in a high-density residential community for middle class families he created in Qinhuangdao, China. Called Golden Dream Bay, it is expected to be completed by the end of