Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank

Norman Robert Foster
Born	1 June 1935 Manchester, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Architect
Awards	Stirling Prize, Pritzker Architecture Prize, Minerva Medal
Buildings	30 St Mary Axe, London Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters, Ipswich
Projects	American Hangar at the Imperial War Museum Duxford

The restored Reichstag in Berlin, housing the German parliament. The dome was built by Foster's redesign.

The Hearst Tower in New York City.

The Expo MRT Station, part of the Mass Rapid Transit system in Singapore.

View of 30 St Mary Axe from street level. The bulding serves as the London headquarters for Swiss Re and is informally known as "The Gherkin".

The Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters in Ipswich was one of Foster's earliest commissions after founding Foster Associates.

Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM (born 1 June 1935), whose name can also be rendered Lord Norman Foster or simply Lord Foster, is an English architect and designer.

Biography

Foster was born in Levenshulme, Manchester, England to a working class family. He was naturally gifted and performed well at school, and took an interest in architecture, particularly in the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier.

Leaving school at 16, he worked in the Manchester City Treasurer's office before joining National Service in the Royal Air Force. After he was discharged in 1961, Foster attended the University of Manchester's School of Architecture and City Planning. Later, he won a the Henry Fellowship to the Yale School of Architecture, where he met life long partner Richard Rogersand earned his Master's degree. He then travelled in America for a year, returning to the UK in 1962.

Team4

Foster and Rogers co-founded Team 4, together with Roger's wife Su as well as Yale Alumni Georgie and Wendy Cheesman - Wendy would later become Foster's first wife. Team 4's output were mainly small and ecologically concerned residential projects, but it was the 30,000 sq ft Reliance Controls factory in Swindon in 1965, one of the first examples of the use of lightweight construction and industrial components, the so-called High Tech Architecture which would form the basis of both Foster's and Rogers' work.

Foster and Partners

After Team 4 went their seperate ways, in 1967 Foster and Wendy Cheeseman founded Foster Associates, which later became Foster and Partners. 1968 saw the beginning of a long period of collaboration with American architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, which continued until Fuller's death in 1983, on several projects that became catalysts in the development of an environmentally sensitive approach to design - inclduing the Samuel Beckett Theatre project.

Foster Associates breakthrough building in the UK was the Willis Faber & Dumas headquarters in Ipswich, from 1974. The client was an family firm insurance company which wanted to restore a sense of community to the workplace. Foster created open-plan office floors long before open-plan became the norm. In a town not over-endowed with public facilities, the roof gardens, Olympic-sized swimming pool and gymnasium greatly enhance the quality of life of the company's 1200 employees. The building is wrapped in a full-height glass facade which moulds itself to the medieval street plan and contributes real drama, subtly shifting from opaque, reflective black to a glowing backlit transparency as the sun sets. The building is now Grade One Listed.

Present day

Today, Foster and Partners works with its engineering collaborators to integrate complex computer systems with the most basic physical laws, such as convection. The approach creates intelligent, efficient structures like the Swiss Re London headquarters at 30 St Mary Axe, nicknamed "The Gherkin", whose complex facade lets in air for passive cooling and then vents it as it warms and rises.

Foster's earlier designs reflected a sophisticated, machine-influenced high-tech vision. His style has since evolved into a more sublime, sharp-edged modernity.

Foster is currently involved in a dispute with the Couper Collection, a floating art museum near his London offices, regarding his plans to redevelop the area and force removal of the museum's barges.

Ken Shuttleworth, a senior project architect at Foster and Partners, recently left the firm to set up his own architectural practice, MAKE Architects. Shuttleworth had contributed to some of the firm's most prominent projects in the past few years, including London City Hall and 30 St Mary Axe.

In January 2007, the Sunday Times reported that Foster had called in Catalyst, a corporate finance house, to find buyers for Foster and Partners. Foster does not intend to retire, but sell out his 85%+ holding in the company valued at £300M to £500M.

Recognition

Foster was knighted in 1990 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1997. In 1999, he was created a life peer, as Baron Foster of Thames Bank, of Reddish in the County of Greater Manchester. He is a cross-bencher.

He is the second British architect to win the Stirling Prize twice: the first for the American Hangar at the Imperial War Museum Duxford in 1998, and the second 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.

Foster is known pejoratively to some in the United Kingdom as an über- or superstar-architect, the implication 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. He is known to British tabloid newspapers as "Lord Wobbly", in reference to the structural problems with his Millennium Bridge.

Personal life

Foster married business partner Wendy Cheeseman, but the couple later divorced.

A qualified piot, Foster flies his own private jet and helicopter between his homes above the London offices of Foster and Partners, as well homes in France and Switzerland.

Selected projects

Foster has established an extremely prolific career in the span of four decades. The following are some of his major constructions:

Proposed or under construction

• Tivoli Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark (2010) (competition won)
• Museum of Aviation, Getafe, Spain (currently in design phase)
• 200 Greenwich Street, Tower 2 of the planned reconstruction of the World Trade Center in New York City, United States (currently in design phase)
• Reconstruction of New Holland Island, Saint Petersburg, Russia (ongoing)
• Russia Tower, Moscow, Russia (2007 – 2011)
• Spinningfield Square, Manchester, England (2005 – 2010)
• Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, Dallas, United States (2009)
• The Bow, Calgary, Canada (2009)
• The Troika, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2004 – 2009)
• International Terminal, Beijing Capital International Airport, Beijing, China (2007)
• New Elephant House, Copenhagen Zoo, Copenhagen, Denmark (2007)
• Queen's Dock, Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow, Scotland (2004 – 2007)
• Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Middlesex Guildhall, London, United Kingdom (2009)

Completed

• Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, Astana, Kazakhstan (2006)
• Faculty of Pharmacy Building at the University of Toronto, Canada (2006)
• Hearst Tower, New York City, United States (2006)
• Dresden Hauptbahnhof reconstruction, Dresden, Germany (2002 – 2006)
• The Philological Library at the Free University of Berlin, Germany (2005)
• National Police Memorial, The Mall, London, United Kingdom (2005)
• 40 luxury apartments, St. Moritz, Switzerland (2005)
• Millau Viaduct, Gorge du Tarn, France (1993 – 2005)
• Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London (2004)
• McLaren Technology Centre, Woking, United Kingdom (2004)
• The Sage Gateshead, Gateshead, England (2004)
• 30 St Mary Axe, Swiss Re London headquarters, London, United Kingdom (1997 – 2004)
• Metro of Bilbao, Spain (1988 – 1995, 1992 – 2004)
• Universiti Teknologi Petronas main campus, Malaysia (2003)
• Clark Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (2003)
• HSBC Tower, London (2002)
• The Metropolitan Building in Warsaw
• Lionel Robbins Library renovation, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom (1993 – 2001)
• J Sainsbury headquarters, Holborn Circus, London (2001)
• La Poterie metro station, Rennes, France (2001)
• Al Faisaliah Centre, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2001)
• Expo MRT Station, Singapore (2001)
• Center for Clinical Science Research, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (2000)
• Millennium Bridge, London, United Kingdom (1996 – 2000)
• Greater London Authority Building (London City Hall), London, United Kingdom (2000)
• Reichstag restoration, Berlin, Germany (1999)
• Department of Economics, Manor Road Building, University of Oxford, England (1999)
• Redevelopment of the Great Court of the British Museum, London, United Kingdom (1999)
• Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong, China (1992 – 1998)
• Commerzbank Tower, Frankfurt, Germany (1991 – 1997)
• The Clyde Auditorium, part of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow, Scotland (1995-1997)
• Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraksa (1994)
• Carré d'Art, Nîmes, France (1984 – 1993)
• Torre de Collserola, Barcelona, Spain (1992)
• Terminal building at Stansted Airport, London, United Kingdom (1981 – 1991)
• HSBC headquarters building, Hong Kong (1979 – 1986)
• Renault Distribution Centre, Swindon, United Kingdom (1983)
• Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England (1974 – 1978 )
• Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters, Ipswich, England (1971 – 1975 )
• IBM Pilot Head Office, Cosham, Portsmouth, England (1970 – 1971)

See also

• Thin-shell structure

External links

• Foster and Partners
• Building "The Gherkin" (film)