Skip to main content

Architect Moshe Safdie: ‘I was antagonistic to postmodernism – and I paid a price’

From his 60s utopian housing development to infinity pools in the sky, the Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie has always designed larger-than-life buildings. Now 84, he has written a memoir about the obsessional energy that still fuels his career

Once, Moshe Safdie was the future. Then he wasn’t. Now, decades later, it turns out that, after all, he was. In 1967 he realised Habitat at the Montreal Expo, one of the most memorable projects of that decade, a revolutionary model of urban living that didn’t quite catch on. In 2010, the Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore was completed to his designs, where the world’s longest infinity pool is lifted in a “sky park” 200 metres in the air. Along with the glass-roofed “paradise garden” and the world’s biggest indoor waterfall that he installed in the same city’s Changi airport in 2019, it is an icon of the epoch of the Instagrammable, ultra-spectacular mega-development that at least some of us now inhabit.

Now 84, Safdie is thinking about his legacy. He has donated his flat at Habitat 67 (for he did the thing that architects are often accused of not doing, which is to live in their own developments) to his alma mater, Montreal’s McGill University, along with his archive. He has written a memoir, If Walls Could Speak, which goes back to his birth in Haifa, in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, to Jewish parents, his mother from Manchester and his father from Aleppo. Now, sitting in the London home of the restaurateur Ruthie Rogers and her late husband, the architect Richard Rogers, old friends of his, Safdie reflects on his career. “For a building done by a bunch of kids it has stood up amazingly well,” he says of Habitat.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/I86ba0S
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

England booed off after failing against Iceland once more in Euros warm-up

It was a long way from being the triumphant Euro 2024 send-off for Gareth Southgate and his England players at a sold-out and increasingly fretful Wembley. Never mind the result because it was not the main thing, however much it stirred memories of you-know-when against Iceland. It was the performance that raised the difficult questions, the worst one for quite some time and at exactly the wrong time. The home fans, thousands of whom made for the exits before the end, were forced to watch the second half – from about minute 55 onwards – through the gaps between their fingers. And it had not been great before that. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/4ndfQL0
Post a Comment
Read more

Manchester City in title driving seat after cruising to win at Leeds

The title stare-off becomes steelier with each week. Elland Road was at its raucous best and a highly motivated Leeds played well enough to ensure Manchester City rarely neared full stride. Nevertheless the leaders mastered the situation, showing they can win via set pieces when means of higher aesthetic merit elude them. Rodri and Nathan Aké proved the point with goals in each half, garnished later by Gabriel Jesus’ sixth in three matches and a Fernandinho daisycutter, and Pep Guardiola’s delight at the outcome was obvious. This had been a possible banana skin, with the potential leveller of such a highly charged atmosphere; instead City cruise on and Leeds, who are in genuine danger of going down, must seek more viable routes to safety. This encounter had an edge from the outset. It needed to, because the heat had been turned up on both teams. City would have expected Liverpool to achieve what was necessary at Newcastle; Leeds might not have banked on Burnley’s turnaround at Watford...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bins ‘overflowing’ in parts of England as Covid hits collections

Staff sickness in areas including London, Gloucestershire and Somerset leads to waste services being scaled back Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Bins across parts of England are reportedly “overflowing” with rubbish from the festive period due to Covid-related staff shortages. London, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Buckinghamshire are among the areas where councillors have warned that bin collections are being scaled back because of staff sickness. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3qIHK0C
Post a Comment
Read more