flexiblefullpage
billboard
interstitial1
catfish1
Currently Reading

Moshe Safdie awarded 2015 AIA Gold Medal

Moshe Safdie awarded 2015 AIA Gold Medal

Safdie is the 71st AIA Gold Medalist.


By AIA | December 11, 2014
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville Ark., designed by Safd
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville Ark., designed by Safdie. Photo credit: Charvex, Wikimedia Commons.

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.

Tags

Related Stories

Urban Planning | Apr 12, 2023

Watch: Trends in urban design for 2023, with James Corner Field Operations

Isabel Castilla, a Principal Designer with the landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations, discusses recent changes in clients' priorities about urban design, with a focus on her firm's recent projects.

3D Printing | Apr 11, 2023

University of Michigan’s DART Laboratory unveils Shell Wall—a concrete wall that’s lightweight and freeform 3D printed 

The University of Michigan’s DART Laboratory has unveiled a new product called Shell Wall—which the organization describes as the first lightweight, freeform 3D printed and structurally reinforced concrete wall. The innovative product leverages DART Laboratory’s research and development on the use of 3D-printing technology to build structures that require less concrete. 

Market Data | Apr 11, 2023

Construction crane count reaches all-time high in Q1 2023

Toronto, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Denver top the list of U.S/Canadian cities with the greatest number of fixed cranes on construction sites, according to Rider Levett Bucknall's RLB Crane Index for North America for Q1 2023.

University Buildings | Apr 11, 2023

Supersizing higher education: Tracking the rise of mega buildings on university campuses

Mega buildings on higher education campuses aren’t unusual. But what has been different lately is the sheer number of supersized projects that have been in the works over the last 12–15 months.

Architects | Apr 10, 2023

Bill Hellmuth, FAIA, Chairman and CEO of HOK, dies at 69

William (Bill) Hellmuth, FAIA, the Chairman and CEO of HOK, passed away on April 6, 2023, after a long illness. Hellmuth designed dozens of award-winning buildings across the globe, including the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company Headquarters and the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

Contractors | Apr 10, 2023

What makes prefabrication work? Factors every construction project should consider

There are many factors requiring careful consideration when determining whether a project is a good fit for prefabrication. JE Dunn’s Brian Burkett breaks down the most important considerations. 

Mixed-Use | Apr 7, 2023

New Nashville mixed-use high-rise features curved, stepped massing and wellness focus

Construction recently started on 5 City Blvd, a new 15-story office and mixed-use building in Nashville, Tenn. Located on a uniquely shaped site, the 730,000-sf structure features curved, stepped massing and amenities with a focus on wellness.

Smart Buildings | Apr 7, 2023

Carnegie Mellon University's research on advanced building sensors provokes heated controversy

A research project to test next-generation building sensors at Carnegie Mellon University provoked intense debate over the privacy implications of widespread deployment of the devices in a new 90,000-sf building. The light-switch-size devices, capable of measuring 12 types of data including motion and sound, were mounted in more than 300 locations throughout the building.

Affordable Housing | Apr 7, 2023

Florida’s affordable housing law expected to fuel multifamily residential projects

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed into law affordable housing legislation that includes $711 million for housing programs and tax breaks for developers. The new law will supersede local governments’ zoning, density, and height requirements.

Energy Efficiency | Apr 7, 2023

Department of Energy makes $1 billion available for states, local governments to upgrade building codes

The U.S. Department of Energy is offering funding to help state and local governments upgrade their building codes to boost energy efficiency. The funding will support improved building codes that reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency, according to DOE.

boombox1
boombox2
native1

More In Category


Urban Planning

Bridging the gap: How early architect involvement can revolutionize a city’s capital improvement plans

Capital Improvement Plans (CIPs) typically span three to five years and outline future city projects and their costs. While they set the stage, the design and construction of these projects often extend beyond the CIP window, leading to a disconnect between the initial budget and evolving project scope. This can result in financial shortfalls, forcing cities to cut back on critical project features.



Libraries

Reasons to reinvent the Midcentury academic library

DLR Group's Interior Design Leader Gretchen Holy, Assoc. IIDA, shares the idea that a designer's responsibility to embrace a library’s history, respect its past, and create an environment that will serve student populations for the next 100 years.

halfpage1

Most Popular Content

  1. 2021 Giants 400 Report
  2. Top 150 Architecture Firms for 2019
  3. 13 projects that represent the future of affordable housing
  4. Sagrada Familia completion date pushed back due to coronavirus
  5. Top 160 Architecture Firms 2021