Moshe Safdie has been announced as the 2015 recipient of the AIA Gold Medal. Voted on annually, the AIA Gold Medal is regarded as the architecture profession's highest honor given to an individual. The medal honors an individual's exceptional body of work that has made a lasting impact on architectural practice and theory. Safdie will receive the Gold Medal during the 2015 AIA National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. — bustler.net
These are a few of Safdie's works:
Habitat '67 for Montreal's 1967 World's Fair
Marina Bay Sands in Singapore
The Salt Lake City Main Public Library in Salt Lake City, Utah
Read more on Bustler.
21 Comments
About time. Safdie puts starchitects to shame.
I agree, Miles. I've always loved his work. It's not shy, certainly, but still humane.
Love his work, but Miles, he VERY MUCH IS one of the original starchitects. Maybe not as bombastic, but the studio culture, method of working etc is very much similar.
He was a star before the term was redefined from a movie star who designed a house. His responsible, pragmatic philosophy makes him the very antithesis of today's headliners. The current crop can't hold a candle to him.
I walk past 2 of his buildings every morning, and I still remember going to a lecture of his while in 1st year. Love his work.
Agree with all the comments above, about time. I worked in his office during my first year out of school and it was an amazing experience.
Also, can we take a moment to appreciate that awesome mustache?
moment taken... and then some.
I'm also proud that I was escorted off the premises of Habitat by security many years ago. Apparently you can't pull the "I'm an Architect" card and wander aimlessly through rich folk's houses.
That's a good story, Non Sequitur. I would love to visit Habitat, it's on my list.
I highly recommend taking a self-guided tour, you just need to be careful where you point your camera. I was shooting B&W 35mm film at the time so my equipment might have set off the guards' spidey-senses. I wonder now where those negatives are, is it too late to ask santa for a negative scanner for xmas?
It's pretty damn isolated considering it's proximity to downtown Montreal but the hike across the bridges is worth the effort.
Am I really the only one here who thinks his work is just as loud and bombastic as Hadid, Libeskind, Eisenman, etc....only a hell of a lot uglier?
Archinect is showing pictures of the gems for this article - and I admire Habitat, as do most architects - but otherwise, eeek. His projects in Vancouver and Kansas City take 'bad' to a whole new level.
Honoring his individual success stories is certainly warranted. Honoring his entire life's work when it's so inconsistent leaves me a bit puzzled.
Like I said, his work is definitely not shy. But it's actually made of material, not just swooped, or sharded, all over the place.
When aesthetics (or money) are the only measure the end result is garbage no matter what it looks like.
Is Form Follows Function really such an antiquated concept?
Don't know if I'd call Habitat -form follows function, but it's a joy to look at. Agree with Hotel Sphinx though, not very different than the expressionism out there regardless of materials.
HotelSphinx, I wonder what you think of this project, and if it is, in your words "bombastic"
If you call this project Bombastic and Ugly, I will wait for you to build SOMETHING and gt back to me.
@Donna - I'll give you that, regarding materials. It's not the same titanium skin over again.
@sameold... - First of all, pour yourself a tall glass of bourbon and calm down. Just voicing my opinion - as is everyone on this forum - and no need to make this so personal (or take this so personally).
Yes, the Israel museum is quite nice, but I'm always skeptical when the "money shot" of any building is a panoramic of the landscape off in the distance. That's the sign of a nice site, not necessarily a nice building. I'm sure a similar money shot from the top of WTC1 would be really spectacular, and that tower is a huge disappointment.
But since you asked, I seriously doubt that I can be the only person on this site who finds these projects a bit too hard to swallow.
The point of my post wasn't to offer some sweeping statement on whether Safdie's architecture is beautiful, hideous, or somewhere in the middle...just that I find it odd that in this era when the professions seems so fed up with the formal excesses of decon and blobitecture, the AIA gives its top prize to a guy whose work is just as self-congratulatory and expressive as so many pariahs of the profession.
HotelSphinx, it is an interesting question. Honestly it would take me awhile to ponder why Safdie's work feels so different for me that Zaha et al. (For the record: I love Zaha's CAC building in Cincinnati, probably the only project by her I've seen, but it's on a confined urban site and uses extremely raw materials and details - no metal panels trying to be glossy and smooth.)
Miles is getting close to it when he says Safdie doesn't seem like as much of a prima donna as so many other starchitects. Maybe it's just that he's been doing work longer? I learned about habitat in the early 80s so he already seemed like an accomplished practitioner then. He seems like he's been slogging along doing significant work for a long time without getting a lot of fanfare for it. maybe that's just a misconception on my part.
I remember when the Salt Lake City library was published I was comparing it to Rem's Seattle Public Library and felt like Salt Lake was so warm and human and gestural. I've since visited Seattle and LOVE it, it's an amazing and complex building, but I wouldn't use warm or gestural to describe it.
If architecture was art (which it's not, and there is a long thread on the matter here), then Hadid would be Roy Lichtenstein, who spent his entire career rehashing the same pop idea over and over again. Safdie would be Picasso, who constantly explored different ides in various media in a process of continuous learning and exploration. While I certainly don't like all of Picasso's work that doesn't keep me from appreciating him as a true artist.
As with all metaphors, this one was used to make a point and shouldn't be extended for it's own sake. But if you must I'm sure some will find amusement there, albeit somewhat removed from the topic at hand.
"just that I find it odd that in this era when the professions seems so fed up with the formal excesses of decon and blobitecture, the AIA gives its top prize to a guy whose work is just as self-congratulatory and expressive as so many pariahs of the profession."
The profession might be fed up with those formal excesses, but that won't change until they start teaching architects some humility. So many studio projects have bombastic programs and those who "break the box" get the rewards in an environment that still seems to value flash over quiet competence. Then again, looking at the Beaux-Arts method, those programs were just as large scales. Museums seem to be the modern equivalent of the opera schemes in the past. It's just that the smaller scaled projects most of us work on scale down easier with the compositional techniques of the past as opposed to the Iconic forms favored today. One simply has to look at the recent AIA awards. One could scale up or down just about all those projects and still have the kind of formal excesses we're talking about.
BTW, architecture is an art imho, especially considering the profussion of formal excesses, which to my mind are simply large sculptures. In Zaha's case, quite nice ones!
Of course Sphinx, I will have my wine, sorry for being so dramatic!
But, I do not think Safdie's work demonstrates, in any way, the excesses shown by Zaha, Eisenman or LIbeskind. If anything, the "star" I would compare him to is an older-skool Thom Mayne. Formalist vocabulary, but very material and space based, rather than achieved by pushing software to its limit, and hence making it "different"
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.