Safdie, Moshe (1938)

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Beginning his architectural career with the celebrated master plan for the 1967 World Exhibition and Habitat ’67, Moshe Safdie is an international figure in contemporary architecture, completing projects such as museums, airports, educational institutions, federal courthouses, performing arts centers, and libraries.

Moshe Safdie was born in Haifa, Israel. After moving to Canada with his family, he studied architecture at McGill University. Upon graduating in 1961, he apprenticed with Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia. He then moved to Montreal, where he became involved with the World Exhibition. In 1970, he established a Jerusalem branch office participating in the rebuilding of that city. There he was responsible for major segments of the restoration of the Old City and the reconstruction of the new center, along with projects such as the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and the Rabin Memorial Center.

Safdie has taught at Yale, McGill, and Ben Gurion universities and was Director of the Urban Design Program and the Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He maintains offices in Boston, Jerusalem, and Toronto. A few of his most renown projects include: Quebec Museum of Civilization, Vancouver Library Square, Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex, United States Institute of Peace Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel in Jerusalem. Safdie has published many books and been the recipient of numerous awards including the Gold Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

This sketch represents an early conceptual design for the Exploration Place Science Center and Children’s Museum in Wichita, Kansas. The project is a one hundred square foot building of galleries, theaters, and exhibit space. It is located in downtown Wichita where the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers meet. Constructed of toroid geometries that form a series of concave roofs, the exhibition building becomes an ‘island’ extending into the river and, in contrast, the ‘land’ building has been inserted deep into the earth.

The sketch shows a series of unarticulated geometric shapes perched on a dark body of wavy lines. Safdie writes that this sketch ‘was done at the earliest design phases in which I had concluded that the museum should, in part, be an island within the river, expressive of the component parts of the individual galleries that make up the museum.’ The image appears to capture Safdie’s first thoughts. Unsure of the shape the future structure would take, the sketch uses light lines to give the gesture of what the building will be. Because of the abstract form, he filled the shapes with color to articulate volumes, most likely to begin to view the combination of parts. The façades have not yet been given windows or materiality, but instead convey the shadows of planes. At this point the pieces could not be viewed as a building, but a suggestion that assisted Safdie in exploring the next iteration.

Rendered with ink and either chalk or crayon, in values of blue and tan, the lines are expressive and brief; few strokes of the pen outline a possible building. The river in the foreground is the most worked feature, showing waves and areas of deep blue. Sensitive to the site, Safdie has chosen to view the building from the river. This emphasizes the strong relationship the building has with its site, and is most likely part of the impetus for the design conception.

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