Moshe Safdie

Moshe Safdie was born in 1938 in Haifa

Safdie was born in Haifa in 1938 to a family of Syrian Jews with roots in Aleppo. He studied at the Hebrew Reali School and lived for a time on a kibbutz. In 1953 an economic crisis hurt his father's textile business, and the family moved to Montreal.

He studied architecture at McGill University and received his degree in 1961. His thesis on a modular building system later became Habitat 67, built for Expo 67. He also apprenticed with architect Louis Kahn.

In 1964 he founded his firm in Montreal, and in 1970 he opened a Jerusalem office. In Israel he planned the Mamilla complex, the master plan for Modi'in, the Yad Vashem museum and part of Ben Gurion Airport. His plan to redesign the Western Wall plaza was shelved, and a plan to expand Jerusalem westward was canceled.

Abroad he designed the National Gallery of Canada, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the United States Institute of Peace headquarters. In Asia he designed Marina Bay Sands, which opened in 2010, Jewel Changi Airport and Raffles City Chongqing. His firm is based in Somerville, Massachusetts.

He received the AIA Gold Medal in 2015 and the Wolf Prize in Architecture in 2019. He married Nina Nusynowicz in 1959 and Michal Ronnen in 1981. He has four children.