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Moshe Safdie: The Latest Architecture and News

Architecture Classics: Habitat 67 / Safdie Architects

Habitat 67, designed by the Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie as the Canadian Pavilion for the World Exposition of 1967, was originally intended as an experimental solution for high-quality housing in dense urban environments. Safdie explored the possibilities of prefabricated modular units to reduce housing costs and allow for a new housing typology that could integrate the qualities of a suburban home into an urban high-rise.

Reflecting on the project’s significance in “A look back at habitat ’67” Safdie stated that “Habitat ‘67 is really two ideas in one. One is about prefabrication, and the other is about rethinking apartment-building design in the new paradigm.” [1]

Architecture Classics: Habitat 67 / Safdie Architects - Exterior Photography, Apartments, FacadeArchitecture Classics: Habitat 67 / Safdie Architects - Exterior Photography, Apartments, FacadeArchitecture Classics: Habitat 67 / Safdie Architects - Interior Photography, Apartments, Stairs, Facade, HandrailArchitecture Classics: Habitat 67 / Safdie Architects - Exterior Photography, Apartments, FacadeArchitecture Classics: Habitat 67 / Safdie Architects - More Images+ 28

"With Intention to Build", Moshe Safdie’s Exhibition of Unbuilt Projects Opens in Boston, USA

From October 2022 through January 2, 2023, The Boston Architectural College (BAC) and Safdie Architects will display the most groundbreaking unbuilt projects by Moshe Safdie. With Intention to Build showcases the architect's creative process throughout the 55 years of his career, including models, drawings, and various texts and photographs. The exhibition provides context and tells the story behind these radical unrealized designs that have influenced projects such as Habitat 67 in Montreal, Canada, and Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.

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Singapore: Designing New Futures

Singapore has emerged as a global design center. As a city-state and island country in Southeast Asia, the Lion City is home to a new class of high-rise buildings, gardens and iconic landmarks. While the design world is familiar with structures like the Safdie's Jewel Changi Airport or OMA's Interlace, Singapore has also built a range of new public and civic buildings alongside extensive land reclamation projects.

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Safdie Architects Reiterates the Ideals of Habitat 67 in Three New Projects

By now an architectural classic, Safdie’s Habitat ’67 represents a highly influential vision for a community-oriented, nature-infused urban housing model, and at the same time, a critical example of the possibilities of prefabrication. Fifty years after the design of Habitat ’67, Safdie is still exploring this vision of urban living, further developing the concept with projects such as Altair Residences, Qorner Tower and Habitat Qinhuangdao. Rooted in the architect’s motto - “for everyone a garden”, the new projects capitalise on outdoor terraces, natural light and ventilation, as well as communal spaces.

Safdie Architects to Design Major Crystal Bridges Expansion

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has announced plans for a major expansion by Safdie Architects in Arkansas. The new addition will increase the size of the current facilities by 50 percent, adding nearly 100,000 square feet to the 200,000-square-foot facility. The expansion will showcase the museum's growing collection and provide space for educational and outreach initiatives, cultural programming, and community events.

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Design Disruption Explores High Density Housing with Moshe Safdie and Ma Yansong

A new webcast and podcast series, Design Disruption, has been launched by architectural writer Sam Lubell and social entrepreneur Prathima Manohar. In a partnership with ArchDaily, the first episode today at 11 am (EST) on ArchDaily, YouTube and Facebook. This episode explores high density housing with guests Moshe Safdie, founder of Safdie Architects, and Ma Yansong, founder of MAD architects. The goal of the series is to provide an international perspective on disruptive issues with guests from different continents.

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Exhibition: Miracles in Concrete. Structural Engineer August Komendant

August Komendant (1906–1992) was an Estonian-American structural engineer, whose collaboration with famous architects and engineers resulted in several 20th-century architectural masterpieces. His professional career spanned more than half a century from the 1930s to 1980s and coincided with an era characterised by modernisation, urbanisation and the rapid development of technology.

Concrete
By the middle of the century, reinforced concrete had become one of the most popular structural materials for building a new living environment. A strong and durable composite emerges when liquid concrete, a mix of water, cement and aggregate (sand, gravel, crushed stone, etc.), solidifies around the reinforcing steel bars. Concrete

Safdie Architects Propose Conceptual Design for the Abrahamic Family House

Safdie Architects’ entry for the Abrahamic Family House competition located in the Saadiyat Island Cultural District, in Abu Dhabi, brings together a mosque, a synagogue, and a church within a shared public park.

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Penthouses Designed by BIG for KING Toronto in Canada

Designed by BIG, in collaboration with Allied and Westbank, KING Toronto portrays architecture’s ability to create a community and meet the challenges faced by society nowadays. Located in Canada’s King Street West neighborhood, the project is a direct response to the context.

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Safdie Completes World's Tallest Indoor Waterfall in Singapore

Safdie Architects has completed construction of the world's tallest indoor waterfall in Singapore's Jewel Changi Airport. Featuring a lush indoor forest and a green trail of airport amenities, the Jewel Changi Airport was designed to reinvent the concourse as a public attraction. The project was built with a torus-shaped glass dome the includes an oculus at its center. Dubbed the Rain Vortex, the oculus allows water to cascade into the airport.

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Safdie Architects Design a Fourth Tower for Marina Bay Sands in Singapore

Safdie Architects have announced an expansion to the Marina Bay Sands Resort in Singapore. Linking to the existing resort and waterfront development, the project takes cues from the original three hotel towers completed in 2011. Safdie Architects will expand the existing resort with a new stand-alone hotel tower with about 1,000 suites and its own sky roof and swimming pool, as well as a 15,000-seat music arena.

Safdie Architects design a Series of Treehouse-Like Pavilions for Surbana Jurong Headquarters

Safdie Architects have unveiled details of their proposed corporate headquarters for Surbana Jurong in Singapore. The scheme seeks to reflect the mission of Surbana Jurong (Singapore’s leading architecture, urban design, and infrastructure firm) of characterizing Singapore as the “Garden City.” Located on a previously undeveloped site, the campus will “integrate harmoniously with its natural landscape” while also offering over 740,000 square feet of space for the firm’s 4000 employees. The scheme marks the first initiative for the Safdie Surbana Jurong joint venture, which was established in 2017 to develop innovative and iconic projects in Asia-Pacific.

The scheme manifests as a series of treehouse-like pavilions united by a central pedestrian “street,” all shaped by a careful examination of, and respect for, the site’s existing trees and unique flora. The result is a distinctive network of offices embedded within surrounding parkland, with the glazed pedestrian street interweaving interior and exterior landscapes.

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Moshe Safdie Awarded 2019 Wolf Prize

Moshe Safdie has been named the laureate for the 2019 Wolf Prize for Architecture. The award recognizes a winner in either painting, music, sculpture, or architecture. As one of Israel’s most prestigious international awards, the prize is bestowed upon luminaries for their accomplishments in advancing science and art for the benefit of humanity. The jury cited Safdie’s exemplary career motivated by the social concerns of architecture and his formal experimentation.

This Week in Architecture: Reduce, Reuse, Rethink

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the massive production of architecture today. Scroll through ArchDaily for more than a minute and even we'd forgive you for losing track of it all. But what seems like an endless scroll of architectural production doesn't quite fit with the popular movements surrounding resource sharing and community. 

Hidden among the mass production that has defined architecture in the last century is a germ - one that seems to be marching to the forefront of practice today. More and more designers seem to be taking on locally-focused and/or adaptive reuse works. Award shortlists today highlight not icons by recognizable names, but sensitive international works that are notable for their process as much as their product. 

The common image of the architect may be of one obsessed with ego and newness, but practice today doesn't bear that out as much as it used to. This week's news touched on issues of reduction, reuse, and a radical rethink what architecture is in the 21st century. 

Safdie Architects and Perkins+Will's Albert Einstein Medical School Breaks Ground in São Paulo

The first Brazilian project by Safdie Architects has broken ground in Sao Paolo's Morumbi neighborhood on November 6. Developed in partnership with Perkins+Will, The Albert Einstein Education and Research Center is part of the Albert Einstein hospital complex.

The new center, named Campus Cecilia and Abram Szajman, will be one of the most advanced institutions in Latin America for medical studies. It will feature innovations in learning methods and technologies, as well as flexible research laboratories capable of adapting to the advancement of hospital techniques.

Habitat Qinghuangdao / Safdie Architects

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Qinhuangdao, China

Moshe Safdie Discusses His Unbuilt Work and Timeless Meaning In Architecture

While Moshe Safdie may be more well known for the bold forms defining his portfolio of built projects—ranging from the National Gallery of Canada and the horizontal Raffles City Chongqing to the iconic Habitat 67—the architect considers his unbuilt works as important, if not more. Safdie ponders the role of these projects and more in PLANE-SITE’s latest addition to the series Time-Space-Existence.