Norman Robert Foster Archives

Norman Foster is a prolific British architect known for his innovative, stylish structural designs, as seen with edifices like Berlin’s Reichstag, New York City’s Hearst Tower and London’s City Hall.

image source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/cc4cb060-5907-406a-8e11-eb544926a4d9 by Andy Miah

About his life

Norman Foster, in full Lord Norman Foster of Thames Bank, original name in full Norman Robert Foster (born June 1, 1935, Manchester, England), is a British architect known for his sleek, modern buildings made of steel and glass.

The Albion Riverside Building,2003 – London, UK

image source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/e39d866b-8d8f-42e3-95f7-1f0a98bfef3b by Bods

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 (later Foster + Partners).

image source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/c0794536-33de-41d0-8741-9414f1dbbd27 by stevecadman

What are Foster’s style main features ?

Foster’s earliest works explored the idea of a technologically advanced “shed,” meaning a structure surrounded by a lightweight shell or envelope.

Norman Foster's Gherkin — Norman Foster’s Gherkin

image source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/c1cfc721-12e4-4b81-b52d-0a9d3e206a76 by Marek Bakajsa

Foster was one of the architects who turned things around by proving that to make good buildings, it would not be necessary to abandon the principles of Modernism—clear structure, lucid forms—but simply to apply them with new rigor and imagination.

What are his most iconic buildings?

In the early 1970s, Foster had his big break with the design of the Willis Faber & Dumas headquarters in Ipswich, a low-rise office building that was innovative for its use of escalators, contoured facades and idyllic, nature-oriented interiors.

image source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/fe4ef2fe-8a62-4861-ad5f-3faef42c1d73 by Adrian Cable

The late ‘70s and early-to-mid-‘80s saw Foster and his team working on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation headquarters, a modern three-tower edifice, while the ‘90s saw the architect heading up an update of the Reichstag in Berlin, rebuilding the emblematic glass dome after the unification of East and West Germany. In the early 2000s, Foster also contributed to the iconic New York City skyline with his design of the Hearst Tower, a 44-story skyscraper with a triangulated facade atop an Art Deco foundation.