More Canadiana at TED 2014

The sun finally shone in Vancouver today, the mountains finally started to peek out from the clouds, and Canadians continued to do us proud.  In the first All Star Session, Wade Davis kicked off with an eloquent description of what it means to be Canadian, better than the hilarious I am Canadian beer commercial which ran the first day.

Later in the session, Moshe Safdie described his philosophy of architecture, starting with his triumph of Habitat for the Montreal Olympics. He continues his passion for integrating openness and gardens even as he builds dense urban spaces. He showed some of his recent work, including fantastic designs for China and Singapore. I loved this example of of a mixed residential project in Qinhuangdao, China, which I found on his web site. Safdie said that one of the design guidelines was that each apartment had to receive a minimum of 3 hours of natural sunlight, even at the winter solstice. Here's the design.