Norman Foster

Encyclopedia : N : NO : NOR : Norman Foster

---

Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM (born 1 June 1935) is a British architect and designer.

Foster was born in Manchester to a working class family. Leaving school at 16, he initially worked in Manchester's City Treasurer's office before National Service in the Royal Air Force. Once out of the Royal Air Force, he went to Manchester University's School of Architecture & City Planning in 1961. He won a fellowship to Yale University, where he earned his Master's degree.

He co-founded Team 4 with Richard Rogers, whom he met at Yale, and in 1967 founded Foster Associates. He collaborated with Buckminster Fuller on several projects between 1971 and 1983; these projects were catalysts in the development of an environmentally sensitive approach to design. Today, Foster and Partners, together with its engineering collaborators, integrates complex computer systems with the most basic physical laws, such as convection, to create intelligent, efficient structures like the Swiss Re headquarters in London, whose complex facade lets in air for passive cooling and then vents it as it warms and rises.

Knighted in 1990 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1997, he was created a life peer in 1999, with the title of Lord Foster of Thames Bank. Foster is known by the British tabloid newspapers as "Lord Wobbly", due to structural problems with his Millennium Bridge. He has been criticised for his treatment of an arts charity, the Couper Collection, located next door to his London offices and home. See [article UK Times article] and [UK Observer article].

Norman Foster is the second UK architect to win the Stirling Prize twice: once for the American Hangar at the Imperial War Museum Duxford in 1998 and again for 30 St Mary Axe in 2004. In consideration of his whole portfolio, Foster was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1999. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers, and winner of the Minerva Medal, the Society's highest award.

His designs were originally a stylish, machine influenced high-tech but he has moved away from this to a more sublime, more acceptable sharp-edged modernity.

He is known to some in the UK – pejoratively – as an über- or superstar-architect, the accusation being that certain architects are given preferential status based on their fame. Foster's critics dismiss his ideas as a dystopian (rather than utopian) dream. In Lord Foster: Stormin' Norman, Andrew Walker claims that Foster's critics "grumble about his fetishistic use of steel, aluminium and glass. His very ubiquity is seen as a threat." [link]

Recently one of Norman Foster's senior project architects, Ken Shuttleworth, who was responsible for some of Foster's best known buildings such as the GLA and "The Gherkin", left to set up the architectural practice "Make". [link] Some people believe that Shuttleworth was the driving force behind Foster in recent years.

Projects

He has had an extremely prolific career including:

• Russia Tower, Moscow (2007-2011)
• Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, Dallas, Texas, due to open in the 2009/2010 season
• 40 luxury apartments, St. Moritz, Switzerland (2005)
• Spinningfield Square, Manchester (2005-2010)
• EnCana "New Building Project" — Calgary, Alberta, Canada (2010?)
• Beijing Capital International Airport International Terminal, China (2007)
• New Elephant House, Copenhagen Zoo (2007)

---

• Hearst Tower (New York City), (2006) http://www.hearstcorp.com/tower/
• Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Canada
• Library of the Philological Faculty at Free University of Berlin, Germany (2005)
• National Police Memorial — The Mall, London (2005)
• Dresden Hauptbahnhof — Reconstruction (2002 – 2006)
• Millau Viaduct — Gorge du Tarn, France (1993 – 2005)
• McLaren Technology Centre - Headquarters of the McLaren Group (2004)
• The Sage Gateshead (2004)
• 30 St Mary Axe — Swiss Re headquarters (1997 – 2004 )
• Universiti Teknologi Petronas main campus, Malaysia (2003)
• The Troika – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2004 – 2009)
• J Sainsbury headquarters, Holborn Circus, London (2001)
• La Poterie metro station, Rennes, France (2001)
• Expo MRT Station at Singapore (2001)
• Greater London Authority Building — London City Hall (2000)
• Reichstag redevelopment in Berlin (1999)
• Millennium Bridge in London (1996 – 2000 )
• Redevelopment of the Great Court of the British Museum (1999)
• Carré d'Art, Nîmes, France (1984 – 1993 )
• Torre de Collserola, in Barcelona (1992)
• Lionel Robbins Library renovation, Brititish Library of Political and Economic Science London School of Economics (1993 – 2001 )
• Metro of Bilbao, Spain(1988 – 1995 ) &(1992 – 2004)
• Terminal building at Stansted Airport(1981 – 1991 )
• HSBC headquarters building in Hong Kong (1979 – 1986 )
• Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong, Chek Lap Kok (1992 – 1998)
• Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt, Germany (1991 – 1997 )
• Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at University of East Anglia in Norwich(1974 – 1978 )
• Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters, Ipswich, England (1971 – 1975 )
• IBM Pilot Head Office, Cosham, Portsmouth, England (1970 – 1971)

See also

• Foster and Partners
• Richard Rogers
• Ken Shuttleworth

External links

• [Foster and Partners]
• [Ken Shuttleworth]
• [Structurae: Lord Norman Foster]
• [30 St Mary Axe]
• [London City Hall]

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?