Moshe Safdie: Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen

Person Place Thing is an interview show hosted by Randy Cohen based on the idea that people are particularly engaging when they speak, not directly about themselves, but about something they care about. 

Cohen’s guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that is important to them. The result: surprising stories from great speakers. This installment of Person Place Thing will be a conversation with Moshe Safdie, Principal of Safdie Architects. 

Ordinarily, this program takes place live, on-stage; but for the duration of the current crisis, we’ll live-stream our conversations.

For more information and to hear past episodes, visit PersonPlaceThing.org.

Speakers:
Moshe Safdie, FAIA, FRAIC, OAA, SIA, Principal, Safdie Architects 
Randy Cohen, Host, Person Place Thing

Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. Over a celebrated 50-year career, Safdie has explored the essential principles of socially responsible design with a distinct visual language. A citizen of Israel, Canada, and the United States, Safdie graduated from McGill University. After apprenticing with Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia, he returned to Montréal to oversee the master plan for the 1967 World Exhibition. In 1964, he established his own firm to realize Habitat ’67, an adaptation of his undergraduate thesis and a turning point in modern architecture. 

Author of four books and a frequent essayist and lecturer, Safdie’s global practice includes projects in North and South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. Projects span a wide range of typologies, including airports, museums, performing arts, libraries, housing, mixed use, and entire cities. His honors include the Companion of the Order of Canada, the Gold Medal from both the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the American Institute of Architects, la Medaille du Merité from the Order of Architects of Québec, Canada, and Israel’s Rechter Prize. The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum awarded Safdie the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2016. 

Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for “Late Night With David Letterman,” for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s “TV Nation.” He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for The New York Times Magazine. His most recent book, Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything, was published by Chronicle.