The AIA Gold Medal 2015 was awarded to Moshe Safdie

The Israeli architect Moshe Safdie is primarily associated by the professional community as the author of the prefabricated apartment building Habitat '67, which became a symbol of the World Expo held nearly half a century ago in Montreal, Canada. The project by the then twenty-nine-year-old Safdie was also his thesis at the Philadelphia McGill University, where he studied under Louis Kahn. In the superstructure of Habitat '67, one can find references to Kahn's unrealized City Tower project for Philadelphia from the late 1950s, as well as the current works of Japanese metabolists. In the same year that he completed Habitat '67, Safdie moved back to Israel as a member of the team renovating the Old City of Jerusalem. He has the largest share of realizations in Israel; however, during his time as a professor at Harvard University (1976-84), he established a branch in Somerville near Boston and today operates studios in Toronto, Singapore, and Shanghai.
On Wednesday, December 10, 2014, the American Institute of Architects awarded him the Gold Medal for the upcoming year, which will be presented to him in mid-May 2015 at the AIA Convention in Atlanta. Linna Jane Frederick, the chair of this year's jury, justified the selection: “Safdie's comprehensive and human approach to designing public and cultural spaces around the world has influenced millions of people and entire generations of younger architects.”

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