Has the unusual design of the new Salt Lake City Main Library attracted your attention? How about the leaning crescent-shaped walkable wall that extends from the main building?
Moshe Safdie, a world-renowned architect from Boston and head of Moshe Safdie & Associates, designed the structure.
Although his design was the starting point for the library project, Safdie is quick to credit the teamwork of all the builders and other employees on the project.
"We've all done it together," he said.
Salt Lake City chose Safdie's design four years ago from a field of 90 applicants. Safdie has visited the city at least once a month since then to tweak the design and coordinate the project.
He's most proud of the natural lighting the building will capture, as well as the spectacular mountain view from the roof garden.
Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1938, he moved to Canada at age 15 and was schooled at McGill University in Montreal from 1955-61. After two years working in architectural design, he started his own design company in Montreal and later moved to the United States, where he continued architectural work. He was also director of Harvard's urban design program from 1978-84.
His first claim to fame was design of the master plan for the 1967 World's Fair. His Expo '67 included the first major prefabricated housing project ever constructed. He later refined that plan for housing projects in Israel and Puerto Rico.
Safdie established his Jerusalem office in 1970.
He received a Gold Medal Award from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada in 1995, among other awards, and has written many articles and four books about architecture — "Form and Purpose" (1982), "Beyond Habitat by 20 Years" (1987), "Jerusalem: The Future of the Past" (1989) and "The City After the Automobile" (1997).
Safdie also designed the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Library Square in Vancouver. He acknowledges the Salt Lake design is similar to Vancouver's but said the extra land available for the Salt Lake library project meant it could go to a new level.
He credits that to colonizer Brigham Young's large block/grid layout of Salt Lake City, which gave the project more room to work with.
However, he doesn't care for the extra-wide streets that were also a part of Brigham Young's city design.
"You don't need room to turn a stage coach around in the streets anymore," he quipped.
Safdie is also involved with the design of a new $80 million federal building in Washington, D.C., to open in 2005 and with the Center for Archaeology and National Treasures in Jerusalem, to be completed in 2007.
He addresses the public at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, in the new main library auditorium, focusing on "Order and Complexity." He's also scheduled as a library speaker on Saturday, Oct. 11.
E-mail: lynn@desnews.com