From Moshe Safdie & Associates:
In many subtle ways, an architect’s work reflects his or her values, design principles, sensibilities and personal inspirations. We believe a successful building must embody a sense of its purpose, place and tectonics. First and foremost, a work of architecture must give expression to the life for which it is intended: not only must it fully and competently satisfy the requirements of the program, but its form should resonate with the diverse spaces and activities it contains. Similarly, we conceive of architecture as a natural extension of its surroundings—urban or rural, northern or southern, ancient or entirely new—and recognize its responsibility to contribute richly to its setting and enduringly to its community.
To achieve a successful fit between a building’s purpose and its design requires that the architect and the client together engage in a process of exploring the values and choices that will evolve into the final form of the building. An architectural program lists quantitative requirements, but often misses many qualitative issues. Through dialogue, we draw out these subtleties and address the complex issues of a building’s character, image and symbolism. In designing a school, for example, we must ask the fundamental question: what makes a wonderful place for learning? There are obviously many answers. We search for the most appropriate solution in the context of each particular place and time.
We have designed buildings in places as diverse in geography and culture as Boston, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Mexico and Singapore. Always balancing our broad spectrum of experience with our commitment to develop vital forms, we seek a close connection and reciprocity between a building and its setting, and an architectural language infused with the essence of the cultural context. For every project, an appreciation of the site and region’s landscape, climate and heritage has deepened and enriched our design and construction process.
Contemporary architecture often lacks the qualities of ritual and ceremony that have historically been fundamental to civic, cultural and religious life. A central goal of our work is to create unique spaces and forms that introduce a sense of ceremony appropriate to each particular project.
Finally, we believe that people have always derived the greatest pleasure from architecture by recognizing the way in which real materials come together to create a building. One can comprehend how the skeleton, flesh and skin hold together in the colonnade surrounding a temple or in flying buttresses that brace a cathedral’s roof and walls; in the structural lattice of woodwork in a Tudor country house, or in the wood beams and joists of a room. We believe that the qualities of rich and textured detail which we associate with architecture of the past can develop today from careful, innovative and expressive methods of construction.
The greatest ornament in architecture depends upon an appreciation of its making. We strive to create buildings that are unified and authentic expressions of their technology, construction materials, setting and purpose.
