The loop closes. It all started at McGill University in the 1950s for Moshe Safdie, and so that’s where all the traces of his exceptional professional career will now be concentrated.
The “starchitect” has just donated the rest of his archives to his alma mater. The lot deposited in the university library now includes more than 100,000 pieces on paper, the writings of his firm Safdie Architects, around 300 models related to projects planned or carried out around the world, countless sketches and some 250 sketchbooks .
Two other establishments were battling to house these treasures: Harvard University, where Moshe Safdie taught, and the Tel Aviv museum associated with the school of architecture in Israel, the country where he was born. The Canadian, who is also an Israeli and American citizen, opted for McGill because, he says, this university meant a lot to him.
“I received an incredible education there,” says the architect, born in 1938 in Haifa, from where he emigrated 15 years later to join Montreal. He was met Monday on campus, in the middle of some of his documents already there.
“McGill has been very important in my life. Canada has also been generous to me, more than anywhere in fact. I received the Order of Quebec, the Order of Canada. This country gave me a lot and recognized me when I was very young. »
The archives continue a donation begun two decades ago, which already brings together the first 25 years of creation, from 1964 to around 1999. The accumulated material fills two very large halls on campus.
New documents and artifacts covering another quarter century of production will arrive in Montreal in the coming months. They will take up two or three times as much space, over 5000 square feet in total. This sum will constitute the most important fund of the hundred accumulated by the Collection of Canadian architecture John Bland of McGill, created in 1974. John Bland directed the School of architecture of the university when Mr. Safdie is registered there. .
A concern for accessibility
The initial model and the original of his graduation thesis, filed in 1961 and entitled A Case for City Living, are one of the highlights of the collection. This student project, proposing the prefabrication and stacking of rectangular boxes to inhabit, led to Habitat 67, one of the flagship constructions of the Terre des Hommes universal expo, with Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome. The Montreal building complex is now designated national heritage by the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications. It figures prominently in all the history books of 20th century architecture.e century.
“Architecture was traditionally at the service of a privileged few,” says its designer. For me, this idea did not hold and remains impossible. If we build a habitat, it must be for everyone. »
Mr. Safdie also donated his personal Habitat 67 apartment, a duplex comprising four modules. This place, restored in 2017, at 50e anniversary of construction, will be used for academic research, artist-in-residence programs and the organization of symposia and exhibitions.
Safdie Architects, founded in 1964 to assume the direction of the Habitat 67 project, has since continued in this vein of responsible and humanistic architecture by designing other apartment buildings, urban centers, educational houses or museums. . In Canada alone, we owe him the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée de la civilization and the Desmarais pavilion at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Works around the world
A branch of the firm was set up in Jerusalem in 1970. Projects led to the construction of the Yitzhak Rabin Center, Ben Gurion Airport, a university campus and, of course, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. , contract won after an international competition. The triangular-shaped concrete building, partially buried in a mountain near Jerusalem, is another masterpiece.
“It was a very emotionally charged project,” says Safdie, who was born before World War II and married a Holocaust survivor in Montreal. I worked there for ten years with a lot of meetings, committees, survivor consultations. »
He adds that architecture is made up of ups and downs. “It’s a kind of yoyo,” he sums up. After Habitat 67, he proposed six more housing complexes for Puerto Rico, New York, Tehran, Jerusalem, but none were realized. He worked for four years to imagine the Ballet Opera House in Toronto, a project that was finally abandoned. The McGill Archives will exhibit other of his proposals for lost competitions, including those for the Supreme Court of Israel, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and the National Museum of Art of China.
“My firm may have won 50% of the competitions it competed in, which isn’t bad. You have to accept losing it. […] In architecture, you have to be persistent because there is a lot of resistance when you try to change things. »
He is currently working on a digital museum project which will only organize exhibitions in virtual reality. “The building made of bricks and walls will not exist,” he said, not revealing the name of the promoter of this curiosity. The digitization and online dissemination of its own documents has begun.
Safdie Architects headquarters are located in Boston. This choice was made after the appointment of Moshe Safdie as director of the urban planning program at Harvard University in the late 1970s. Contracts were pouring in, including from Canada. The firm had nearly a hundred employees in the United States, and their boss wanted to avoid commuting to Quebec. There are also now branch offices in Toronto, Shanghai and Singapore. But it was in Montreal that it all started.