If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture

Summary

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. 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 listeners behind the veil of an essential yet mysterious profession to explain through Safdie's own experiences how an architect thinks and works. 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. 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.