The 84-year-old Habitat 67 mastermind sat down with Rowan Moore to discuss his career and new memoir If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture. Among other topics, he said he had “no idea” that his 2011 Marina Bay Sands design would become “an instant icon” and that the political situation in his native Israel brings him “great frustration” even though he believes supporters of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanction) movement are making a “stupid mistake.”

Safdie then spoke to the chilling reception that met his post-Habitat endeavors in Puerto Rico and New York, which failed to “replicate like mushrooms” as the then 30-something architect had expected. An exhibition of Safdie’s unrealized work is conveniently on display at the Boston Architectural College’s McCormick Gallery from now through January 2nd. 

“As an architect committed to building and impacting the environment, I've always considered designs developed without intention of building to be incomplete statements,” Safdie said in a preview of the exhibition. “So much of reality, be it economics, the force of gravity, or construction feasibility can be ignored as to make such architectural productions less relevant. But there is another category of unrealized designs. These are designs conceived with intention to build, resolving the varied forces that constrain and shape architecture, that then, because of external circumstances of one kind or another, remain on the drawing boards.”