If Walls Could Speak

Over more than five decades, legendary architect Moshe Safdie has built some of the world’smost influential and memorable structures – from the 1967 modular housing scheme inMontreal known as Habitat to the Marina Bay Sands development in Singapore. For Safdie, theway a space functions is fundamental; he is deeply committed to architecture as a social forcefor good, believing that any challenge, including extreme population density and environmentaldistress, can be addressed with solutions that enhance community and uplift the human spirit.

If Walls Could Speak takes readers behind the veil of an essential yet mysterious profession toexplain through Safdie’s own experiences how an architect thinks and works – from the sparkof imagination through the design process, the model-making, the politics, the engineering, thematerials. Relating memorable stories about what has inspired him – from childhoods in Israeland Montreal to the projects and personalities worldwide that have captured his imagination -Safdie reveals the complex interplay that underpins every project and his vision for the rolearchitecture can and should play in society at large.

Illustrated throughout with drawings, sketches, photographs, and documents from his firm’svoluminous archives, If Walls Could Speak is a book like no other, and will forever change theway you look at and appreciate any built structure.

Author Biography

Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist and author who claims Israeli, Canadian and American citizenship. Over a 50-year career, Safdie has explored the essential principles of socially responsible design through a comprehensive and humane design philosophy.