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Name
Nationality
Birth date
Birth place
Practice name
Personal information
Norman Foster
British
June 1, 1935 (age 73)
Stockport, Cheshire, England
Work
Foster + Partners
30 St Mary Axe, London
Significant
buildings
The restored Reichstag in Berlin, housing the German parliament. The dome was built by
Foster's redesign.
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 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' 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 fullheight 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 Mrite.
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:
Completed
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 Lrssen Yachts.[20]