Words With… / Moshe Safdie, Canada
Taking shape
The past year has contained a number of firsts for celebrated Canadian-Israeli-American architect Moshe Safdie. In January 2021, patients started to be accepted at his first hospital commission, at the Serena del Mar urban development in Cartagena on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Another medical complex designed by his practice, the Albert Einstein Education and Research Center in São Paulo, also welcomed its first students in April. And, thanks to some advice from his friend Samantha Power, the US’s former ambassador to the UN, he put pen to paper during lockdown and wrote a memoir, which will be published in September 2022.
Still, says Safdie, doing something for the first time is perhaps easier than revisiting an existing project. His studio’s recent commission to expand the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art complex in Arkansas, which opened more than 10 years ago, is just one example of how revisiting an existing design requires a nuanced, careful approach. Speaking to Monocle from his studio in Boston, Safdie discusses his current projects, why he’d like to design a stadium and why the architectural ideals conceived for his Expo67 residential complex in Montréal haven’t been fully realised – yet.
Your first hospital commission in Cartagena opened last year. Have you been able to visit it yet?
I’m hoping to go soon. They’ve opened phase one – the operating rooms and that kind of thing are functioning – and I am very eager to see it because they are thrilled. Everybody says that they feel as though they’re checking into a resort; the rooms look into the garden spaces and some of them have balconies. Urban hospitals have the problem of being very tight for space, so they end up being taller, very high-density buildings. It’s a matter of starting with the premise that you owe daylight to every space and that the sense of orientation should not depend on coloured stripes on the floor. It’d be harder to do with a dense hospital but the same principles apply.
Is there something particular to the process when you’re designing a new kind of building?
Our practice actually looks for the building types that we have not yet done, because the experience of doing the first one is so exciting. Like the first library in Vancouver. Or the first airport, Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv. You’re just thinking from your principles. It’s hard work; you have a lot to learn. And there are no shortcuts. But understanding it and questioning why certain things are done in particular ways: that process of getting to know a kind of building is very exciting.
Is there a building type that you haven’t yet done?
It would be interesting to do a stadium. I’m sure that they have a rich, complex set of requirements, including sightlines and weather protection. For one thing, stadiums are about big crowds – moving them in and out. So what does that mean? How would you make them flow? I don’t even know what all the issues are because I haven’t done one. But I’d be fascinated to get into that world.
And are there any that you’d revisit?
I’ve talked a lot about the three-dimensional city. Not in the way that Habitat67 was actually built but its original design. That was a system of streets in the air and the public realm underneath it; the total three-dimensional integration. And I have built pieces of it, at Marina Bay Sands and in Chongqing, and in my new residential complexes. But the opportunity to do it on the scale of a whole district, as I proposed originally for Expo67 but the government didn’t have the resources or the time to do – I hope that I have the opportunity to do that in some way.
safdiearchitects.com
