One day in 1943, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology accepted David Azrieli, then 21, into its architecture studies program. Though he would become Israel’s most successful real-estate tycoon and build the Tel Aviv Azrieli Center, which has become the iconic image of modern-day Israel, Azrieli calls it “the happiest day of my life.”

At 91, after introducing malls and skyscrapers to Israel, he is still building; his next major project will be a modern hi-tech center in Holon that rivals the Azrieli Center in size, and will be completed in 2017. All this building has made Azrieli very wealthy.

He is, according to the March issue of Forbes Magazine, worth $3.1 billion, making him the 401st richest person in the world and the eighth wealthiest in Canada. He is also the best-compensated Israeli executive, having earned NIS 23 million ($6.3 million) in 2012. His company, Canpro Investments, is the largest, local real-estate firm.

Little is known of Azrieli’s life as an Israeli because he spends seven months a year in Montreal (and the other five in Israel); and also because he kept his holdings private until 2010, and has steered clear of local politics and politicians, keeping out of the headlines. To be sure, the name Azrieli constantly pops up in conversations in Israel as in, “I plan to shop at Azrieli today.”

We met in mid-August in his office in the heart of Montreal, a city that evokes mixed feelings for Azrieli; he finds the city’s blend of French and English cultures appealing but has nothing good to say about the provincial government of Quebec, which, he says, has a history of anti-Semitism. In Polishaccented English, he speaks slowly, and is as lucid as he is friendly, so amicable that when after an hour I try to end our interview, he insists on taking me page by page through a book on the three towers that comprise the Azrieli Center. He is wearing a plaid sports coat with a red handkerchief in the front pocket and a pair of ribbons in his coat lapel indicating Canada’s highest honor, the Order of Canada, which he was awarded in 1984, and the Order of the Province of Quebec, which he was awarded in 1999.

Born in 1922, in Makow Mazowiecki, Poland, Azrieli eventually ended up in Palestine after fleeing his native town ahead of approaching German troops. His father Raphael Hirsch Azrylewicz manufactured ladies coats and, as a child, David was fascinated with the design of clothing. “If I wouldn’t have been an architect, I might have been a jewelry or ladies’ fashion designer,” he tells The Jerusalem Report.

But cities and buildings intrigued him more than jewelry or ladies clothes. “Cities were like a happening, an adventure,” he notes, adding that upon arriving in Tashkent as a teenager, he was especially impressed with Islamic architecture. One can see the Islamic influence in his real-estate projects, he notes.

He spent 1943 to 1946 at the Technion and, at the age of 75, received a master’s degree in architecture from Carleton University in Ottawa. His father, mother Sara Chaya, brother Pinchas, and sister Tzireleh perished in the Holocaust. He fought in the battles leading up to the 1948 War of Independence in Israel. During the war, Azrieli (in his words, “a very junior officer”) was part of Brigade 7, famed for using newly arrived immigrants who barely spoke Hebrew and for opening the road to Jerusalem.

Discharged from the Israel Defense Forces in 1949, Azrieli traveled to South Africa, England, the United States, and finally to Canada, where, in Montreal, he met his wife, Stefanie Lefcourt. They have four children and seven grandchildren.

In 1958, Azrieli started a building business in Montreal, constructing small duplexes and apartment buildings. “I started out from scratch, using my own hands to build those first four duplexes,” he recalls.

“But I worked really hard and had a positive attitude.” He had no desire to sit behind a desk at a drawing board. “As an architect, I always wanted to be in the field,” he says.

“I loved construction work, standing and climbing on scaffoldings, and dreamed of the moment in which I would see thebuildings I designed turned into reality in front of my very eyes.”

After years of building in Canada, Azrieli wanted to undertake major construction projects in Israel that would turn the Jewish state into an economic power. In the early 1980s, Ramat Gan officials asked Azrieli if he would build a large mall in their city.

Gazing at the city’s existing plans, Azrieli found them lacking. He agreed to build the shopping center but on the condition that he have complete control over its design.

Before Azrieli brought the notion of malls to Israel, shopkeepers felt proud about their postage stamp-size stores. Along came Azrieli, offering the shopkeepers a chance to expand their businesses. But to do so, shopkeepers had to give up store ownership and rent stores in one of his new malls.

As far as Azrieli was concerned Israeli malls gave shoppers the chance to feel on a par with American and British shoppers.

“What my revolution has done is to provide young people in every corner in Israel the same equality and happiness they would feel by being in a mall in London or New York,” he says.

He created the chain store in his malls, a term that most Israelis had not heard of. The risks of building such multi-store complexes in a country of kiosks and tiny shops were substantial. “We were taking a chance,” admits Azrieli, “because people were not used to it and, most importantly, they didn’t believe a mall would succeed.”

As the father of store rentals in Israel, Azrieli saw advantages for storekeepers. By renting and not putting all their money into the purchase of a piece of a building, mall storekeepers could free up profits to start stores in other malls. Azrieli also convinced banks, which until then had been willing to lend only to brick and mortar stores and not to lease-held stores, to lend to mall store renters.

The severest crisis Azrieli faced came in the mid-1980s, when he had invested millions of dollars in building what would be the first local mall – the Ayalon Mall in Ramat Gan. But when inflation skyrocketed to 500 percent a year, the government curbed development sharply. Azrieli was millions of dollars short to complete the mall, but the government barred him from importing the necessary funds.

It was only when a Bank Leumi official looked over the shell of the Ayalon Mall and observed, “You know, it’s crazy, but it’s going to work,” that Azrieli found the way to complete the project. The Ayalon Mall opened in 1985, followed by Azrieli malls in Beersheba in 1990, and in Jerusalem in 1993. Azrieli claims the Jerusalem mall is the largest in the Middle East.

The crown jewel in Azrieli’s building efforts was the construction of three towers, side by side, which house a huge mall, business offices and a parking garage – in the heart of Tel Aviv. One tower is in the form of a triangle, one in the form of a square, and one in the form of a circle.

When, in 1985, Azrieli heard that Tel Aviv mayor Shlomo Lahat wanted to attract a builder to construct a major building on a 34,500-meter site where garbage trucks parked near the Ayalon Highway, he met with the mayor and put forward his ideas.

Eight years later, in December 1993, at the cornerstone laying for the Azrieli Center, Azrieli articulated his dream. “In my mind’s eye, I can see the center standing tall, breathing, and full of life, hosting thousandsof people who work, shop, and enjoy it from morning till night. I can already envision the three towers rising above the shopping center, renewing the Tel Aviv skyline, and turning into one of its symbols.”

Marketing executives presented the Azrieli Center as “a new concept for the Israeli business world,” as it offered a large selection of services under one roof – a nationwide delivery service; a local police station, 3,600 parking spaces, a spa and health club of international standards, travel agencies, restaurants and fully equipped conference rooms.

Nothing gave Azrieli more satisfaction than the speed with which he built the Azrieli Center. When a floor was completed, he had a six by six-foot sign hung on the outside with the number of that floor. Thousands of drivers along the adjacent Ayalon Highway watched in awe as the signs quickly displayed higher and higher numbers.

The media welcomed Tel Aviv’s new symbol: political pundit Raviv Drucker, then a reporter for the Maariv daily, stated, “The Azrieli Center is something we have never seen here before. If the bridge they built over the Yarkon River [which collapsed in 1997, killing four and wounding 60] marked the lowest point of Israeli building culture, the Azrieli Center is clearly its peak.”

Noting that local builders took 20 months to construct an average four-bedroom apartment in Tel Aviv, Drucker pointed out that Azrieli had required only 18 months to build the skeleton of the Azrieli Center.

The Azrieli Center took three years to build at a cost of $350 million and opened in 1999. Proudly Azrieli notes that he was involved in every phase of the towers’ design. “I know where every screw went,” he says.

Detractors questioned whether the location of the proposed towers was ideal.

The center would be built not near Tel Aviv’s commercial center at Rothschild and Allenby Streets, but on a small concrete island on the outskirts of the city. When 200 stores appeared on the waiting list to open in the center, the worries of those detractors abated.

If the kova tembel had once been the symbol of socialist Israel, the Azrieli Center has become the symbol of capitalist Israel.

A Channel 10 survey of viewers named the Azrieli Center the third most well-known site in Israel, after the Western Wall and the Knesset. The center is Azrieli’s only building project to bear his name.

While pleased that the external design of the three towers has won much praise, Azrieli argues that it is what is inside the buildings that counts. In its first decade, some 125 million people visited the Azrieli Center’s mall. Subsequently, Azrieli built other malls in Israel – Modi’in in 2008; Acre in 2011 and Kiryat Ata in 2011.

Azrieli attributes his business success (“We are thriving”) to an enduring personal frugality. He has been careful not to overextend his businesses. He has also been conscious of not accumulating riches for their own sake. “Money means nothing to me personally except as a means to build another building,” he remarks.

Most 91-year-olds have long since retired, but not Azrieli. “I have been retired all my life,” he jokes. “What’s the definition of retiring? To do what you want to do. I’m doing what I want to do.”

To prove that he is still a real-estate dynamo, he points out that he has six projects under construction. Among these are a mall in Ramle as well as the hi-tech center in Holon, and a mall and office tower in Rishon Lezion. He notes that in another few years, a fourth tower – an oval one – will be added to the other three at the Azrieli Center.

Then even more Israelis will say, “I’m going to Azrieli today.”