19 February 2008 - 22:44Latest TED talk by Moshe Safde

Official Spiel: “Looking back over a long career, architect Moshe Safdie digs deep into four extraordinary projects to talk about the unique choices he made on each building — choosing where to build, pulling information from the client, and balancing the needs and the vision behind each project. Sketches, plans and models show how these grand public buildings, museums and memorials, slowly take form.”

In truth I have always had difficulty appreciating architecture- which is why I carefully listen to every TED talk on the subject with the hope that someday it will make sense to me.  At the end of this talk the speaker gives a quote and a personal poem, which I found quite good.  The rest of the talk sadly made little more impact upon me than the 4 prior architects’ talks.

To quote morphologist 1917 Theodore Cook: “Beauty connotes humanity.  We call a natural object beautiful because we see that its form expresses fitness, the perfect fulfillment of function.”

Architect Moshe Safde’s Poem:

“He who seeks truth shall find beauty

He who seeks beauty shall find vanity

He who seeks order shall find gratification

He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed

He who considers himself the servant of his fellow being will find the joy of self expression

He who seeks self expression shall fall into the pit of arrogance

Arrogance is incompatible with nature

Through nature and the nature of the universe and the nature of man we shall seek truth
If we seek truth, we shall find beauty.”