When the apartment complex Habitat (Moshe Safdie, architect) appeared fully formed at Montreal's EXPO 67, it was greeted as a victory for humane values within the human jungle, an urbane solution to the housing crisis in the urban centers of the world. Wolf von Eckhardt wrote that it "answers a need so burning that it simply melts all the ifs and buts.... Safdie has dared a new answer to our urban housing problems.... Habitat may well constitute the first real victory of the modern industrial revolution." And The Architects Journal confirmed that it is "One of the most advanced housing projects ever conceived and certainly the boldest exercise in industrialized building methods attempted to date. [It] puts an end to the myth that industrialized building necessarily gives rise to an architecture of uniformity, monotony, drabness and soulless repetition."  Beyond Habitat is a highly personal statement—almost a diary—covering the author's life and career before Habitat, his struggle to transform Habitat from a "design solution" on paper to a living reality, and his general ideas on housing and other matters since its completion. The book is illustrated with halftones of his buildings.  Safdie's account of how Habitat came to life demonstrates dramatically that building housing appropriate to today's cities is much more than an architectural job—it's also a political one in getting a design approved at several levels of bureaucracy, and a technological one of getting it implemented through the use of mass-production techniques. Safdie's stunning success at EXPO 67 is thus based on his architectural originality, his tenacity as a political in-fighter, and his receptivity to new methods of industrial production.  As for the future, an article in Business Week noted that if Safdie is to extend his housing revolution beyond Habitat, "He must persuade dozens of government officials, organize scores of disparate trades, sway a swarm of labor unions, and sell his ideas to thousands of apartment hunters—a skyscraping order from a young architect. But says one EXPO official, 'He just might do it. He got Habitat built—from politics to concrete when he was an unknown 26-year-old architect who had never designed a building of his own before.'"  His book is a search for ways to embody these ideals in realistic and concrete form.

Beyond Habitat

Safdie, Moshe

Collins Publishers

Moshe Safdie achieved worldwide recognition as an architect when his very first building, Habitat 67, at Expo in Montreal, proved to be eminently livable. He was also enthusiastically praised as a writer on architectural and human values after the publication of his first book, Beyond Habitat (The MIT Press, 1970). He has since added to his luster a number of exciting architectural projects, and now this second book, For Everyone a Garden, goes beyond Beyond Habitat in several ways: it provides further detail and technical specificity of Safdie's experience with industrialized building methods for architects and engineers; it updates the status of ongoing projects; and, best of all, it throws off a cascade of sparkling new ideas about people, building, planning, sites, processes, and their interactions. His readers will be glad to know that he remains as outspoken as ever. The book is an integral synthesis of words and pictures. The greater part of its total net area is devoted to illustrations—about 125 drawings, 165 halftones, and 5 color photographs, supported by substantial captions—while the text proper puts these into perspective from four thematic points of view: the idea of the three-dimensional community; the requirements and possibilities of human habitation, ranging in amenity from the minimal to the luxurious; the techniques of building in the factory, with a case study that includes a typical plant layout and simplified flow diagrams; and the attributes of well-planned urban meeting places, whether in Jerusalem, Paris, or San Francisco. The specific projects discussed in the book range from a proposal to convert Expo into a viable community of a quarter-million people after the close of the exhibition to his plans for a synagogue and rabbinical college near the Western Wall in Jerusalem. There are also reports on Safdie's more recent commissions, including the following: —Two projects intended for Manhattan along the East River. In one, the pre-built housing modules were to be suspended from cables. For everyone, a garden and a view. —The original plans for Habitat Puerto Rico, a cluster of modules clinging to a hillside, and a geometric variation designed to root like a cactus to a rocky peninsula in the Virgin Islands. For everyone, a private garden within a natural community garden. —Habitat Israel: even near the desert, a garden terrace for every family. —Habitat Rochester, a community for low- and moderate-income families, with units of minimal size, but all with a small terrace beyond sliding glass doors. —Coldspring New Town, Baltimore, a Commission of 1971. It promises to be one of the few "garden cities" in America to live up to the name in reality.

For Everyone a Garden (Architecture)

Arts & Photography

Architecture

MIT Press]

Modern Jerusalem is one of the most fascinating laboratories for urban development. These studies, conducted in 1980-1984 by teams of faculty, students, consultants, and advisors from the Jerusalem planning community and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, provide a unique sense of Jerusalem's natural and built environment, its livability, cultural diversity, and political and religious tensions. The more than 500 illustrations include contemporary plans and drawings as well as lithographs, engravings, and historical material that convey the special quality of the Holy City. Moshe Safdie, who initiated and directed the Jerusalem studio, discusses the urban design program at Harvard in his introduction to the book. In the first three chapters, he traces Jerusalem's heritage, presents the Old City and its visual basin, and details projects for Damascus Gate (where "all the ingredients, problems, and opportunities that have made urban design a necessary activity are demonstrated"). The remaining chapters focus on the forces of change and how to plan for explosive growth in the new city outside the wall. They present plans for the downtown or central business district, the new satellite towns to the north and south, and the green belt surrounding the city. A final chapter returns to Damascus Gate and presents designs for the no-man's-land, (known as the Seam) outside it. This strategic parcel of land links the Arab and Israeli business districts and the Old City markets. Working with local communities and the municipality, three GSD graduates developed the design that was given the first Progressive Architecture Urban Design Award in 1985. So compelling was this proposal that the municipality intends to implement it. The Jerusalem studio program was not only pedagogically significant but also of great practical value for the city of Jerusalem. The teams shed light on the opportunities and predicaments of a great historic city undergoing rapid growth and development and offered some brilliant design strategies. While the studies focus on Jerusalem, the issues they address - such as how new development can be made to harmonize with historic architecture and the impact that new commercial centers have on a strongly divided population - are relevant to many cities. Moshe Safdie is Ian Woodner Studio Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Harvard University, where he was Director of the Urban Design Program at the Graduate School of Design from 1978 to 1984. His previous books include Beyond Habitat, For Everyone a Garden, and Form and Purpose.

The Harvard Jerusalem Studio: Urban Designs for the Holy City

Mit Pr

The City After The Automobile: An Architect's Vision

In an age of virtual offices, urban flight, and planned gated communities, are cities becoming obsolete? In this passionate manifesto, Moshe Safdie argues that as crucibles for creative, social, and political interaction, vital cities are an organic and necessary part of human civilization. If we are to rescue them from dispersal and decay, we must first revise our definition of what constitutes a city.Unlike many who believe that we must choose between cities and suburbs, between mass transit and highways, between monolithic highrises and panoramic vistas, Safdie envisions a way to have it all. Effortless mobility throughout a region of diverse centers, residential communities, and natural open spaces is the key to restoring the rich public life that cities once provided while honoring our profound desire for privacy, flexibility, and freedom. With innovations such as transportation nodes, elevated moving sidewalks, public utility cars, and buildings designed to maximize daylight, views, and personal interaction, Safdie's proposal challenges us all to create a more satisfying and humanistic environment.

Politics & Social Sciences

Kohn, Wendy

Social Sciences

Routledge

Form and Purpose

Houghton, Mifflin Company

Will ship immediately. Expedited shipping is available.

Philosophy

Houghton/Mifflin

Explores the development of contemporary urbanism and proposes redesigning the functions of cities and their transportation systems in order to maintain the city as a center for commerce and culture

The City After The Automobile: Past, Present, And Future

McKnight, Gerald D.

Basic Books

The cover is different from the ISBN matches.

City After the Automobile

Stoddart+publishing

One of the world's greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built--from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore--and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society Over more than five decades, legendary architect Moshe Safdie has built some of the world's most influential and memorable structures--from the 1967 modular housing scheme in Montreal known as "Habitat" and the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel, to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas and the Marina Bay Sands development and extraordinary Jewel Changi airport interior garden and waterfall in Singapore. For Safdie, the way a space functions is fundamental; he is deeply committed to architecture as a social force for good, believing that any challenge, including extreme population density and environmental distress, can be addressed with solutions that enhance community and uplift the human spirit. Safdie always refers to the "silent client" an architect must ultimately serve: the people who live in, work in, or experience a building. If Walls Could Speak takes readers behind the veil of an essential yet mysterious profession to explain through Safdie's own experiences how an architect thinks and works--"from the spark of imagination through the design process, the model-making, the politics, the engineering, the materials." Relating memorable stories about what has inspired him--from childhoods in Israel and 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 role architecture can and should play in society at large. Illustrated throughout with drawings, sketches, photographs, and documents from his firm's voluminous archives that illuminate his stories, If Walls Could Speak ends with a chapter outlining seven projects Safdie would pursue around the world if resources and will were no issue and the choices were his to make. A book like no other, If Walls Could Speak will forever change the way you look at and appreciate any built structure.

If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture

History & Criticism

Atlantic Monthly Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Safdie, Moshe. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Safdie, Moshe

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Safdie, Moshe. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Beyond Habitat

For Everyone a Garden (Architecture)

The Harvard Jerusalem Studio: Urban Designs for the Holy City

The City After The Automobile: An Architect's Vision

Form and Purpose

Form and Purpose

The City After The Automobile: Past, Present, And Future

The City After The Automobile: Past, Present, And Future

City After the Automobile

If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture