BOSTON, MA.- Four major projects designed by the architect and planner Moshe Safdie—including a performing arts center, a headquarters for a federal institute, and two museums—will be completed and open to the public within the span of two months this fall. In keeping with a philosophical approach that Safdie has applied around the world for more than four decades, the design of each of these new structures is responsive to local historic, cultural, and environmental contexts and grows out of a vision of the way it can affect the lives of the individuals for whom the buildings and public spaces are created: The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts is built on an pivotal site facing downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and contains two distinct halls connected by an expansive porch and glass structure; the United States Institute of Peace, located on the northwest corner of the National Mall in Washington, DC, supports a critical mission of inter-