Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank

Personal informationName Norman Foster

Nationality BritishBirth date June 1, 1935 (age 73)Birth place Stockport, Cheshire, England

WorkPractice name Foster + Partners

Significant buildings

30 St Mary Axe, London

Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters, IpswichWembley Stadium

Significant projects

American Hangar at the Imperial War Museum Duxford

Awards and prizesStirling Prize, Pritzker Architecture Prize, Minerva Medal

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 building serves as the London headquarters for Swiss Re and is informally known as "The Gherkin".

The Millau Viaduct, opened 2004

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, FRIBA, FCSD, RDI, (born 1 June 1935) is a British architect whose company maintains an international design practice. He is Britain's most prolific builder of landmark office buildings.[1]

Biography

Foster was born in the Reddish area of Stockport, England,[2] 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 1962 where he set up an architectural practice as Team 4 with Rogers and their respective girlfriends, 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 and Partners

After Team 4 went their separate 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 - including the Samuel Beckett Theatre project.

Foster and 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.

Present day

Today, Foster + 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.[3][4]

Ken Shuttleworth, a senior project architect at Foster and Partners, recently left the firm to set up his own architectural practice, MAKE Architects.[5]

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.[6]

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.[7] 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.

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.[8] [9]

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, a well respected UK school.

Personal life

Foster married business partner Wendy Cheeseman. She died of cancer in 1989, leaving him with four sons.

For a while he was linked with BBC newsreader Anna Ford, but he married Indian-born Begum Sabiha Rumani Malik who became his second wife. They met when Sabiha was married to Andrew Knight, then Chairman of News International plc.

Foster and Sabiha divorced in 1998, and Foster is presently married to Elena Foster (Ourense, Galicia 1958), Chairman of the Tate International Council, and founder of Ivory Press. Lady Foster of Thames Bank (the former Prof. Dr. Elena Ochoa), is a graduate of University of Madrid, a psychologist, and former journalist, who used to lecture at University of Cambridge and is an expert on Alzheimer's disease. In Spain Miss Ochoa is better known as "La doctora del sexo" after she presented the prime-time TV programme "Hablemos de Sexo" ("Let's Talk About Sex"), in 1990. T[10]

A qualified pilot, Foster flies his own private jet and helicopter between his home above the London offices of Foster and Partners, as well to his homes in France and Switzerland.[6] In 2007, Foster bought a Swiss 1720s chateau from the German industrialist Charles Grohe, which will become his home from late 2008.[11]

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

Torre Caja Madrid under construction (September 2008). APIIC Tower ,Hyderabad, India (2007-2010) Torre Caja Madrid , Madrid, Spain (2004-2008) Black Sea Gardens, Byala, Bulgaria (2008) Tower, Cork, Republic of Ireland, (2008-2011) Culture and Leisure Centre, Ciudad del Motor de Aragón [1] , Alcañiz, Spain

(2007) (competition won) 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) U2 Tower , Dublin, Ireland (2008-2011) (competition won) 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) Queen's Dock, Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow, Scotland

(2004 – 2007) Supreme Court of the United Kingdom , Middlesex Guildhall, London, United

Kingdom (2009) Khan Shatyry in Astana, Kazakhstan. Masdar City , Abu Dhabi (announced 2007) New Yale School of Management campus, New Haven, CT (announced

September 4, 2007) Camp Nou stadium, Barcelona, Spain (announced September 18, 2007)[12]

Crystal Island , Moscow, Russia [13] [14]

Completed

Reichstag dome at night

Dresden Hauptbahnhof roof and cupola

Metropolitan Building in Warsaw

Carré d'Art, Nîmes New Elephant House, Copenhagen Zoo, Copenhagen, Denmark (2007–2008)

International Terminal, Beijing Capital International Airport, Beijing, China (2007)

John Spoor Broome Library, Cal State Channel Islands. (2006–2008) Kogod Courtyard, Center for American Art and Portraiture at the National Portrait

Gallery, Washington, DC (2004–2007)[15]

Lumiere residences, Sydney, Australia (2007–2008) Thomas Deacon Academy (2005–2007) The Willis Building , City of London, United Kingdom (2004–2007) Wembley Stadium , London, United Kingdom (2002–2007) Palace of Peace and Reconciliation ,[16] Astana, Kazakhstan (2006) The Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building[17] at the University of Toronto, Canada

(2006) Hearst Tower ,[18] New York City, United States (2006) Dresden Hauptbahnhof reconstruction, Dresden, Germany (2002–2006) Deutsche Bank Place , Sydney, Australia (the first Sir Norman Foster building in

the Southern Hemisphere) (2005) 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) 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) View on the map Metro of Bilbao, Spain (1988–1995, 1992–2004) Universiti Teknologi Petronas main campus, Malaysia (2003) Clark Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (2003) 8 Canada Square (HSBC Group Head Office), London (2002) The Metropolitan Building in Warsaw (1997–2003) Lionel Robbins Building renovation, British Library of Political and Economic

Science, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom (1999–2001) J Sainsbury headquarters, Holborn Circus, London (2001) La Poterie metro station, Rennes, France (2001) Al Faisaliyah Center , 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) View on the map Greater London Authority Building (London City Hall), London, United

Kingdom (2000) View on the map 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) Valencia Congress Centre, Valencia, Spain (1993–1998) View on the map Hong Kong International Airport , Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong (1992–1998)

Commerzbank Tower , Frankfurt, Germany (1991–1997) The Clyde Auditorium, part of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in

Glasgow, Scotland (1995–1997) Faculty of Law, Cambridge (1995) Joslyn Art Museum , Omaha, Nebraska (1994) Lycée Albert Camus, Fréjus, France (1993) Kings Norton Library, Cranfield University (1993) Carré d'Art , Nîmes, France (1984–1993) View on the map Torre de Collserola , Barcelona, Spain (1992) Terminal building at London Stansted Airport, England (1981–1991) View on the

map HSBC Main 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)

Non-architectural projects

Foster's other design work has included the Nomos desk system for Italian manufacturer Tecno,[19] and the motor yacht Izanami (later Ronin) for Lürssen Yachts.[20]