The places were we are entertained, pleasured, happy, sad, excited and pray for a victory...our temples
Norman Robert Foster
..is a British architect whose company maintains an international design practice. He is Britain's most prolific builder of landmark office buildings. In 2009 Foster was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award in the Arts category.
Life
Foster was born in Reddish, Stockport, 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, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 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 1956 Foster attended the University of Manchester's School of Architecture and City Planning (graduating in 1961).
Later, he won the Henry Fellowship to the Yale School of Architecture, where he met former business partner Richard Rogers and earned his Master's degree. He then travelled in America for a year, returning to the UK in 1963 where he set up an architectural practice as Team 4 with Rogers and the sisters Georgie and Wendy Cheesman.
Georgie (later Wolton) was the only one of the team that had passed her RIBA exams allowing them to set up in practice on their own. Team 4 quickly earned a reputation for high-tech industrial design.
Foster + Partners
After Team 4 went their separate ways, in 1967 Foster and Wendy Cheesman 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.
Foster + Partners' breakthrough building in the UK was the Willis Faber & Dumas headquarters in Ipswich, from 1974. The client was a 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, 25m 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.
Today, Foster + Partners works with its engineering collaborators to integrate complex computer systems with the most basic physical laws, such as convection.
(Convection is the movement of molecules within fluids (i.e. liquids, gases and rheids). It cannot take place in solids, since neither bulk current flows or significant diffusion can take place in solids.)
Foster's earlier designs reflected a sophisticated, machine-influenced high-tech vision. His style has since evolved into a more sublime, sharp-edged modernity.
In January 2007, The Sunday Times reported that Foster had called in Catalyst, a corporate finance house, to find buyers for Foster + Partners. Foster does not intend to retire, but sell his 80-90% holding in the company valued at £300M to £500M.
Awards
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 Air Museum 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.
In Germany Lord Foster received the Order Pour le Mérite.
Most recently, in September 2007, Foster was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the largest architectural award in the world, for the University of Technology Petronas, in Malaysia.
Furthermore, it was announced in January 2008 that Foster was to be awarded an honorary degree from the Dundee School of Architecture at the University of Dundee.
In 2009 Foster was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award in the category Arts.
