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Moshe Safdie

(1938 - )

Moshe Safdie is an Israeli-Canadian architect, urban designer and author. He is best known for designing Habitat 67, a model community housing project in Montreal, Canada.

Safdie (born July 14, 1938) was born in Haifa during the British Mandate over Palestine. He trained at McGill University in Montreal from 1955 until 1961. After working two years in the office of Louis I. Kahn, he started his own practice in Montreal. Later, he moved to the U.S. where he established an practice and taught at Harvard.

Influenced by his graduate thesis, Safdie refined a series of "Habitat" designs which revolved around a cellular housing scheme. Initially his ideas proved expensive and difficult to construct, but Safdie introduced the cellular scheme in several areas including New York and Puerto Rico where his ideas were successfully initiated.

His Israeli period also produced a number of impressive urban insertion projects and various town-planning schemes.


Sources: Dennis Sharp. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991. p. 133. Artifice Great Buildings Online!