If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture

Description

Over more than five decades, legendary architect Moshe Safdie has built some of the world'smost influential and memorable structures - from the 1967 modular housing scheme inMontreal known as Habitat to the Marina Bay Sands development in Singapore. For Safdie, theway a space functions is fundamental; he is deeply committed to architecture as a social forcefor good, believing that any challenge, including extreme population density and environmentaldistress, can be addressed with solutions that enhance community and uplift the human spirit. If Walls Could Speak takes readers behind the veil of an essential yet mysterious profession toexplain through Safdie's own experiences how an architect thinks and works - from the sparkof imagination through the design process, the model-making, the politics, the engineering, thematerials. Relating memorable stories about what has inspired him - from childhoods in Israeland Montreal to the projects and personalities worldwide that have captured his imagination -Safdie reveals the complex interplay that underpins every project and his vision for the rolearchitecture can and should play in society at large. Illustrated throughout with drawings, sketches, photographs, and documents from his firm'svoluminous archives, If Walls Could Speak is a book like no other, and will forever change theway you look at and appreciate any built structure.

Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist and author who claims Israeli, Canadian and American citizenship. Over a 50-year career, Safdie has explored the essential principles of socially responsible design through a comprehensive and humane design philosophy.

'What are the deep personal sources of creativity? How is it possible for someone to take the conventional built environment and make it new? A visionary book, If Walls Could Speak triumphantly answers these questions by giving us intimate access to the life and mind of one of the greatest architects of our time.' - Stephen Greenblatt, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE SWERVE 'The world knows Moshe Safdie as an international architect of the greatest modern buildings. With this compelling memoir Moshe Safdie will now be known as a beautiful writer who conveys - with elegance and understanding - what it takes to create a building while telling the story of a long and fascinating life the reader is privileged to share.' - Ruth Rogers 'If Walls Could Speak is not just about architecture; it is about a man in search of beauty, truth, and service to people through examining "nature, the nature of the universe, and the nature of man." In his autobiography, Moshe Safdie succeeds in making the walls speak, revealing not only the depth, curiosity and drive of a man with a mission, but also the challenges he faced creating extraordinary work for over six decades. Perhaps he says it best: "If we seek truth, we shall find beauty." I was profoundly moved reading this book.' - Yo Yo Ma 'Moshe Safdie makes beautiful and important buildings. He makes buildings that infuse into your day and life a sense that bigger things might suddenly be possible. He makes buildings that you will never, ever forget. What is remarkable about If Walls Could Speak is that Safdie's memoir is as unforgettable as anything he has produced out of stone, cement and steel. Because of his storytelling gifts, it is also a coming-of-age story in which one man developed a vision for how he could do his part to improve the experience of living' - Samantha Power, former United Nations ambassador and bestselling author of THE EDUCATION OF AN IDEALIS