Foster, Sir Norman

▪ 2000

      It was fitting that British architect Sir Norman Foster accepted the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize in Berlin, the home of the historic Reichstag building, which Foster had brilliantly redesigned and renovated to house the German parliament. Foster's work on the Reichstag demonstrated his technical virtuosity, his sensitivity to the environment, and—most of all—his ability to use light and line poetically. In a controversial move, he enclosed the Reichstag under a huge glass dome, which allowed sunlight into the heart of the parliamentary chamber and helped give the building natural ventilation. Within the dome, two spiraling ramps led to an observation deck that offered visitors dramatic vistas of the city and—in what Foster intended as a symbolic reminder of the power of the people—placed them directly above the heads of the politicians. For an architect who had been concerned throughout his career with the ways in which public and private spaces intersect, the Reichstag redesign was a signal achievement.

      Born on June 1, 1935, in a working-class suburb of Manchester, Eng., Foster became interested in architecture as a boy. After serving (1953–55) in the Royal Air Force, he enrolled at the University of Manchester to study architecture. Numerous awards and scholarships followed, including a fellowship to study at the Yale University School of Architecture, where he received his master's degree in 1962.

      Foster's reputation grew steadily upon his return to England. He was a partner (1963–67) in the firm Team 4 and founded Foster Associates in 1967. In the late 1960s he met renowned American architect R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom he later collaborated on a number of projects. Foster's notable works during the following three decades included the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. headquarters in Hong Kong (1986), where an open ground-floor plaza created an inviting public gathering area. In 1991 he designed the tallest building in Europe—the 300-m (984-ft)-tall headquarters for Commerzbank in Frankfurt, Ger.—which featured a tower wrapped with enormous greenhouses on each side. He also won acclaim for his innovative airport designs, including Stansted Airport outside London (1991) and Chek Lap Kok Airport in Hong Kong (1998). His idea of putting the airports' utilities under the concourse and keeping the buildings low, flat, and open to natural light proved highly influential.

      In addition to buildings, the versatile Foster designed a rapid-transit system in Bilbao, Spain, a pedestrian bridge in London, a line of furniture, and an approximately 55-m (180-ft) yacht. His design for the Great Court in London's British Museum was to be completed in 2000. He also received commissions to redesign London's Trafalgar and Parliament squares and to expand and renovate the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He was knighted in 1990.

Locke Peterseim

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▪ British architect

original name in full  Norman Robert Foster 

born June 1, 1935, Manchester, England

      prominent British architect known for his sleek, modern buildings made of steel and glass.

      Foster was trained at the University of Manchester (1956–61) in England and Yale University (1961–62) in New Haven, Connecticut. Beginning in 1963 he worked in partnership with Richard and Su Rogers and his wife, Wendy Foster, in a firm called Team 4. In 1967 he established his own firm called Foster Associates (now Sir Norman Foster and Partners). Foster's earliest works explored the idea of a technologically advanced “shed,” meaning a structure surrounded by a lightweight shell or envelope.

      Foster's first buildings to receive international acclaim were the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts (1974–78) in Norwich, England, a vast, airy corrugated metal shed, and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC Holdings PLC) headquarters in Hong Kong (1979–86), a futuristic steel-and-glass office building with a stepped profile of three towers. In these commissions, he established himself as one of the world's leaders in high-tech design: for both buildings he had ingeniously moved elements such as elevators to the exterior of the building, where they could be easily serviced, and thus created open plans in the centre of the spaces. Balancing out this high-tech character, many of Foster's buildings, including his Hong Kong office and the Commerzbank (Commerzbank AG) (1991–97) in Frankfurt, utilized green spaces, or mini-atria, and were designed to allow a maximum amount of natural light into the offices. In this way, Foster created a more fluid relationship between inside and outside spaces and strove to impart a sense of humanity into an otherwise futuristic office environment.

  Foster, a veteran of the Royal Air Force (1953–55) and an avid pilot, also applied his preference for open plans and natural lighting to airports such as Stansted (1981–91) outside London and Chek Lap Kok (1992–98) in Hong Kong and to the expressively simple American Air Museum (1987–97) at Duxford (England) airfield. At the turn of the 21st century, Foster extended his ideas to world landmarks. He rebuilt the Reichstag (1992–99) in Berlin after the reunification of Germany, adding a new steel-and-glass dome that surrounds a spiral observation platform, and he encased the court of the British Museum (1994–2000) in London under a steel-and-glass roof, creating an enclosed urban square within this famous museum building.

      The recipient of numerous awards for his work, including the Pritzker Prize (1999) and the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale prize for architecture (2002), Foster was also knighted (1990) and granted a life peerage (1999) as Lord Foster of Thames Bank.

Additional Reading

Philip Jodidio, Sir Norman Foster (1997, reissued 2001); Bernhard Schulz, The Reichstag: The Parliament Building by Norman Foster, trans. by Peter Green (2000); Norman Foster, Deyan Sudjic, and Spencer de Grey, Norman Foster and the British Museum (2001).

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