Moshe Safdie joined Lynda Hartigan in a conversation at the Safdie-designed Peabody Essex Museum to discuss Safdie's new book "If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture." This memoir takes readers behind the curtain to explain how an architect thinks and works — from the spark of imagination through the design process, to the model-making, the political and cultural conversations, the engineering and the materials. Through stories from his childhood in Israel and Montreal and reflections on the projects and personalities that have captured his imagination, Safdie reveals his vision for the role architecture can and should play in our world.

© 2023 Peabody Essex Museum

Watch Lynda Hatigan's Dialogue with Moshe Safdie

Lynda Hartigan is PEM’s Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Executive Director and CEO, in which she brings in a wealth of knowledge and experience in curatorship, scholarship, and museum operation. During her time as Chief Curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, she led an internationally recognized acquisition initiative to build collections of works by Black, self-taught, and modern and contemporary artists. Most recently, she was Deputy Director for Collections and Research and Chief Innovation Officer at the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada's largest museum dedicated to art, culture, and the sciences. Lynda has returned to PEM to become the Museum’s first woman director and to boldly lead the nation’s oldest continually operating and ever-evolving museum forward.