Safdie, Moshe

(born July 14, 1938, Haifa, Palestine) Israeli-Canadian architect. Educated at McGill University School of Architecture, Montreal, he began his career in the offices of Louis Kahn. His Habitat '67 was a bold experiment in prefabricated housing using modular units; the design was for a prefabricated concrete housing complex of individual apartment units stacked irregularly along a zigzagged framework that was evocative of an Italian hill town or a pueblo. This aroused intense international interest but failed to catch on as a low-cost housing construction method. Later works include Yeshivat Porat Joseph Rabbinical College in Jerusalem (1971–79) and Coldspring New Town near Baltimore (1971). He served as director of urban design at Harvard University, 1978–84.

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