Moshe Safdie GSD Lecture "On Invention and Fitness" Tuesday Feb 21st

 

Moshe Sadfie was born in Haifa, Israel and moved to Canada with his family as a teenager. He attended McGill University and apprenticed with Louis Kahn (another renown architect with a Jewish background). Safdie catapulted to fame with his Habitat '67 project, an adaptation of his McGill master's thesis built for the exposition in Montreal.

During his illustrious career, Safdie has worked on many projects that are connected with Jewish culture and history, including the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem and extensive work renovating the Old City of Jerusalem. He writes about many of his experiences working on projects in Jerusalem in his book Jerusalem: The Future of the Past.

Safdie's connections to the GSD also run deep; he served as the Director of the Urban Design Program and subsequently was the Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban Design. He also taught a Jerusalem-based studio one semester at the GSD.

Safdie has seemingly been everywhere in the architectural news a lot recently, having recently completed the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington D.C., the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

The information of his upcoming talk has been reposted below from the GSD website:

Moshe Safdie, "On Invention and Fitness"

When

Tuesday, February 21
06:30pm - 08:00pm
add to calendar

Where

Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

Event Description

Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author who embraces acomprehensive and humane design philosophy. Safdie is committed to architecture thatsupports and enhances a project’s program; that is informed by the geographic, social, andcultural elements that define a place; and that responds to human needs and aspirations. Major projects by Moshe Safdie currently under construction or recently completed includeMamilla Alrov Center, a 40-acre development that runs contiguous with the Old City inJerusalem; Marina Bay Sands, a mixed-use integrated resort in Singapore; Khalsa HeritageMemorial Complex, the national museum of the Sikh people in India; the United States Instituteof Peace Headquarters in Washington, D.C.; the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts inKansas City, Missouri; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; andGolden Dream Bay, a residential and retail complex in Qinhuangdao, China.

Safdie has designed and realized a wide range of projects around the world, including cultural,civic, and educational institutions; mixed-use urban centers and airports; and master plans forexisting neighborhoods and entirely new cities. Many of his buildings have become belovedregional and national landmarks, including Habitat ’67, Montreal, Canada; Exploration PlaceScience Center, Wichita, Kansas; Salt Lake City Public Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; PeabodyEssex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, California; theNational Gallery of Canada; and Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Jerusalem, Israel.In 1978, after teaching at Yale, Safdie relocated his residence and principle office to Boston, where he also served as the Director of the Urban Design Program at the Harvard UniversityGraduate School of design, and subsequently was the Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban Design. In addition to numerous articles on the theory and practice of architecture, Safdie has written several books, most notably: Beyond Habitat (1970), For Everyone a Garden (1974),Form and Purpose (1982), Jerusalem: The Future of the Past (1989), and The City After theAutomobile (1997). Moshe Safdie II, a second monograph of his work, was published in 2009.Based in Boston with offices in Toronto, Jerusalem and Singapore, Safdie has been the recipientof numerous awards, honorary degrees, and civil honors, including the Companion of the Orderof Canada and the Gold Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Firm website.

Photo: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Bentonville, Arkansas, US. © Timothy Hursley

Tu B'Shvat and Ecological Activism

The Jewish holiday of Tu B'Shevat falls out this year on Wednesday, February 8th. On the Jewish calendar, it always falls on the 15th day of the month of Shevat (from which the holiday derives its name).

Tu B'Shevat is a minor festival that is considered something of a Jewish version of Arbor Day. Having its roots in ancient Temple practices, Tu B'Shevat allows Jews to celebrate nature and explore the environmental aspects of their tradition. One of the often quoted texts that demonstrates Judaism's advocacy of responsible stewardship of the environment is an ancient rabbinic teaching that states:

"When God led Adam around the Garden of Eden, God said, 'Look at My works. See how beautiful they are, how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil or destroy My world--for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you'" (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7.13).

The traditions of Tu B'Shevat include planting trees. Tu B'Shevat is considered the "New Year for Trees" by the Jewish tradition because it is the season in which the trees in Israel start to emerge from their winter sleep and begin a new fruit bearing cycle.

Another Tu B'Shevat tradition is having a Feast of Fruits, a formal meal similar to a Passover seder. This Tu B'Shevat seder was created by 16th century kabbalists of the city of Safed. Passages from the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic literature would be read while five fruits and two grains associated with the land of Israel would be eaten. Four cups of wine would also be drunk, a mixture of red and white wines to represent the four different seasons.

With the increased concern for the environment and the planet's ecology within each of our design disciplines, Tu B'Shevat can take on additional meaning. We can remember that environmental protection has always been an element in Jewish tradition. Tu B'Shevat can serve as a reminder to us to make sure that our building, urban, and landscape designs do the utmost to protect the natural world that we live in.

Preston Scott Cohen Lecture to Open GSD Exhibit on Tel Aviv Museum of Art

The exhibition, entitled “Lightfall: The Tel Aviv Museum of Art” focuses on Preston Scott Cohen’s design for the Herta & Paul Amir Building at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The exhibition fills the main exhibition space in Gund Hall and will be inaugurated on Jan. 24th and run through March 4, 2012.

Please find more information about the exhibition here:

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/projects/lightfall-herta-paul-amir-building-tel-aviv-museum.html

Preceding the opening, at 6:30pm, Preston Scott Cohen will give a lecture, entitled “Museum as Genealogy,” followed by a discussion with former New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. The lecture will be given in Piper Auditorium at Gund Hall.

Please find more information about the lecture here:

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/events/p-scott-cohen-and-nicolai-ouroussoff.html

The event is free and open to the public.

Industrial Designer Uses PVs and OLEDs to Create Urban Displays

"UrbanTiles, created by Israeli designer Meidad Marzan, offers a glimpse into how OLEDs could potentially light up our cityscapes, in the form of two-sided, reversible tiles that have photovoltaics on one side which collect sun energy during the day, and on the flip side, OLEDs which shine using that power at night."

View the Full Story on Treehugger.com:

http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/reversible-oled-building-tiles-collect-light-up-cities-with-solar-power-video.html

View the project on Meidad's website:

http://www.meidadmarzan.com/

Where Do You Give: Reimagining Tzedakah for the 21st Century

The Where Do You Give? National Design Competition is searching for talented designers who can translate tzedakah's meaning into compelling, relevant design. That is why we have created a design competition to invite a new generation of globally conscious designers to celebrate the critical role that tzedakah plays in today’s world.

Where Do You Give? challenges artists, designers and conceptual thinkers to create an updated vehicle for giving in the 21st century that inspires a national conversation among all of us who seek to engage more deeply with our communities—be they geographic, ethnic, national or other—about where we give, to whom and why.

Reimagine the tzedakah box—an ancient ritual object used to collect money for charitable causes—and you could win $2500, be featured in a national exhibit and have an opportunity to travel internationally to meet with some of AJWS’s grassroots partners. Watch this video or go to www.WhereDoYouGive.org to learn more.

There are also many other ways to participate:

• Read and comment on the WhereDoYouGive.org blog, featuring articles about tzedakah and giving. Want to write for us? Submit a post to sasha@wheredoyougive.org.
• Upload your own video about philanthropy or offer your own personal memories of giving.
• Explore our WhereDoYouGive.org educational materials.
• Tweet about us to spread the word about the competition to artists and designers, Jewish and non-Jewish. Here's a sample tweet to copy and paste: “Enter @AJWS 's awesome new design competition @WhereDoYouGive. Win $2500 and a chance to travel! #WhereDoYouGive “

GSD Sukkah Featured in ArchDaily

 

Prominent architecture blog ArchDaily picked up the story about this year's GSD Sukkah. View their full spread by clicking on the link down below.



http://www.archdaily.com/186356/harvard-gsd-sukkah-design-build-competition-winner/

Libeskind's German Military Museum

Jewish architect Daniel Libeskind punctures a 135-year-old original structure with a five-story wedge of glass, concrete and steel.

 “It was not my intention to preserve the museum’s facade and just add an invisible extension in the back. I wanted to create a bold interruption, a fundamental dislocation, to penetrate the historic arsenal and create a new experience. The architecture will engage the public in the deepest issue of how organized violence and how military history and the fate of the city are intertwined.”—Daniel Libeskind

Read the full story at:
http://www.archdaily.com/172407/dresden%E2%80%99s-military-history-museum-daniel-libeskind/