<p>Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. His wide range of completed projects include cultural, educational, and civic institutions; neighborhoods and public parks; housing; mixed-use urban centers and airports; and master plans for existing communities and entirely new cities. Safdie&rsquo;s projects can be found in North and South America, the Middle East and throughout Asia. </p><p>A citizen of Israel, Canada and the United States, Safdie graduated from McGill University.  After apprenticing with Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie returned to Montr&eacute;al to oversee the master plan for the 1967 World Exhibition. In 1964 he established his own firm to realize Habitat &rsquo;67, an adaptation of his undergraduate thesis and a turning point in modern architecture.</p>

In this podcast, the architect Moshe Safdie discusses the Peabody Essex Museum's design. 

 The rebuilding of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum includes a new visitors&rsquo; center (Mevoah), a new history museum replacing the existing museum constructed in 1953, a Hall of Names, a synagogue, galleries for Holocaust art, an exhibitions pavilion and a learning and visual center. In addition, new underground parking and facilities for tour buses are located adjacent to a new entrance piazza. The overall program quadruples the permanent exhibition space. The mevoah is an arcaded concrete pavilion roofed by skylights and trellises, which cast everchanging shadow patterns. It is reminiscent of a Succah. The lower level accommodates a restaurant and other public services. The historic museum consists of a mostly underground prismatic structure 16.5 meters high and 183 meters long (54 x 600 feet) that cuts through the Yad Vashem hillside, penetrating from the south and protruding to the north. A network of skylit underground galleries lines both sides of the prism. The Hall of Names, located toward the end of the historic museum, is a conical structure extending upward 9 meters (30 feet) and housing the personal records of all known Holocaust victims. A reciprocal cone, penetrating deep into the Jerusalem bedrock below, echoes the upper chamber and commemorates those whose names will never be known. The 20-hectare (50-acre) site also includes the Children&rsquo;s Holocaust Memorial and the Transport Memorial, designed by Moshe Safdie and completed in 1987 and 1995, respectively, as well as the Hall of Remembrance, administrative offices, an education and archival center and the Valley of the Communities. 

Crystal Bridges is both a museum and a cultural center. The project is located in a ravine with a creek fed by Crystal Springs. Two suspended-cable-and-wood buildings span the ravine, creating two ponds. These structures serve as dams as well as bridges.

The design aims to protect the natural beauty of the site while emphasizing a strong sense of place, and certain materials – wood, fieldstone and limestone aggregate – are drawn from the region. Building walls are architectural concrete with wood inlays, and the roofs are composed of a system of laminated wood beams. The liberal use of glass throughout the complex provides great transparency and enhances views of the site.

The museum comprises a number of independent structures that form a series of pavilions over and alongside the ponds. The two bridge buildings are located at opposite ends of the north pond. Galleries are contained in the Gallery Bridge while reception, dining and hospitality facilities are housed in the Entry Bridge. The great hall, a multipurpose public space, is surrounded on three sides by the south pond. Additional structures are nestled into the sloping terrain on both sides of the ravine and contain galleries, function rooms, classrooms, a library, curatorial spaces and administrative offices. In contrast to the convex roof forms of the bridges, the concave roof forms of these structures visually retain the steep slopes.