Norman Robert Foster is a British architect whose company, Foster + Partners, maintains an international design practice famous for high-tech architecture.
Background
Norman Foster was born to Robert Foster and Lilian Smith in 1935 in Reddish, Stockport, Cheshire. They moved, soon after his birth, two miles to 4 Crescent Grove in Levenshulme, Manchester, where they lived in poverty: Foster has no recollection of Reddish.
His father served the ‘Metropolitan-Vickers’, a heavy electrical engineering company, at Trafford Park. It is from this place that his enthusiasm in engineering and designing grew, which, according to him inspired him to take up a career in architecture and design.
Education
He attended Burnage Grammar School for Boys in Burnage. In a Guardian interview in 1999, Foster said he always felt 'different' at school and was bullied, he retired into the world of books. He considered himself quiet and awkward in his early years often making faux pas.
Foster described Manchester as "one of the workshops of the world" and "the embodiment of a great city", his father, Robert, worked at Metropolitan-Vickers, Trafford Park which fuelled Foster's interest in engineering and design. He was fascinated with engineering and the process of designing. He says that caused him to pursue a career designing buildings. Specific interests included aircraft, a hobby he maintains today; and trains, generated by viewing passing trains on the railway outside his terraced home during his childhood.
Foster's father convinced him to take the entrance exam for Manchester Town Hall's trainee scheme which he passed in 1951 and took a job as an office junior in the Treasurer's Department. A colleague, Mr. Cobb's son, was studying architecture and his interest led to Foster considering a career in architecture. After working in the Manchester City Treasurer's office, Foster completed his National Service in 1953 serving in the Royal Air Force, a choice inspired by his passion for aircraft.
Career
Foster returned to Manchester, not wanting to return to the town hall as his parents wished and unsure of which path to follow. He was searching for a world away from his working-class roots which led to the alienation of his parents.
Foster took a job as assistant to a contract manager with John Bearshaw and Partners, a local architectural practice. The staff advised him, that if he wished to become an architect, he should prepare a portfolio of drawings using the perspective and shop drawings from Bearshaw's practice as an example. Bearshaw was so impressed with the drawings that he promoted the young Foster to the drawing department of the practice.
In 1956 Foster won a place at the University of Manchester School of Architecture and City Planning. Foster was not eligible for a maintenance grant so took up a number of part-time jobs to fund his studies, becoming an ice-cream salesman, night-club bouncer and working night shifts at a bakery to make crumpets. He combined these with self-tuition via visits to the local library in Levenshulme. Foster took a keen interest in the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer and graduated from Manchester in 1961.
Foster won the Henry Fellowship to the Yale School of Architecture, where he met future business partner Richard Rogers and earned his master's degree. Vincent Scully encouraged Foster and Rogers to travel in America for a year.
In 1963 he along with Su Brumwell, Wendy Cheesman and Richard Rogers founded an architectural practice called the ‘Team 4’ which soon became reputed for its high-tech architectural designs.
When ‘Team 4’ was dissolved in 1967, Foster and his wife Wendy Cheesman set up ‘Foster Associates’ the same year in London, which was re-christened as ‘Foster + Partners’ in the 1990s.
‘Foster Associates’ began working on huge public structures, industrial buildings, projects on transportation and private houses. In 1968, the company started collaborating with Richard Buckminster Fuller, an American architect that continued till 1983.
Though his company worked on a couple of projects, the real breakthrough project of ‘Foster Associates’ was the ‘Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters’ (1971–1975) in Ipswich, UK. The design of the building was inspired from Manchester’s ‘Daily Express Building’.
His next major project was a public art gallery and museum, the ‘Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts’ (1974–1978) at the ‘University of East Anglia’ in Norwich, UK. In December 2012, it was enlisted as a ‘Grade II building'.
As his reputation grew, he started getting major international commissions from around the continents over the decades. Some of the notable ones are ‘HSBC Main Building’ (1979–1986) in Hong Kong; ‘Hong Kong International Airport’ (1992–1998) in Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong; ‘Joslyn Art Museum’ (1994) in Omaha United States; ‘Reichstag’ restoration (1999) in Berlin, Germany; ‘Millau Viaduct’ (2004) near Millau in Southern France; ‘Supreme Court Building’ (2005) in Singapore and International Terminal of the ‘Beijing Capital International Airport’ (2007) in China.
He continued to take on national assignments along with the international ones. His notable commissions in the UK include ‘London Stansted Airport’s’ ‘Terminal Building’ (1981-91); ‘Faculty of Law’ in Cambridge (1995); ‘National Sea Life Centre’ (1996) in Birmingham; ‘Millennium Bridge’ (1996 – 2000) in London; ‘National Police Memorial’ (2005) in The Mall, London; ‘Wembley Stadium’ (2002 – 2007) in London and ‘The Willis Building’ (2004 – 2007) in City of London.
His layout of the ‘London Stansted Airport’s’ ‘Terminal Building’ that he designed in 1990 fetched him the ‘Mies van der Rohe Award’ or the ‘European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture’.
His upcoming and proposed projects and those under process are spread all over the world. These include ‘New Mexico City International Airport’ in Mexico City, Mexico; ‘Crystal Island’ in Moscow, Russia; ‘Apple Campus’ in Cupertino, California; ‘APIIC Tower’ in Hyderabad, India and ‘Comcast Innovation and Technology Center’ in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
The full height glass façade building of ‘Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters’ in Ipswich, UK that has open plan office floors (an aspect that was still new at that time), roof gardens, gymnasium and swimming pool not only uplifted the design of the site but also increased the quality of life of the employees. It is presently listed as a ‘Grade II building'.
‘Hong Kong International Airport’ (1992–1998) in Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong, world’s largest airport, which was opened on July 6, 1998, remains his major career achievement. The colossal terminal is of eight storeys with a lightweight steel roof of forty-five acres and a glass-enclosed space of six million square feet. It is so huge that it can be seen from space.
Foster along with Michel Virlogeux designed ‘Millau Viaduct’, the world’s tallest bridge situated near Millau in Southern France, which was opened on December 16, 2004.
Foster worked with Steve Jobs from about 2009 until Jobs' death to design the Apple offices, Apple Campus 2 now called Apple Park, in Cupertino, California. Apple's board and staff continued to work with Foster as the design was completed and the construction in progress. The circular building was opened to employees in April 2017, six years after Jobs died in 2011.
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.
In 2007, he worked with Philippe Starck and Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group for the Virgin Galactic plans.
Foster currently sits on the Board of Trustees at architectural charity Article 25 who design, construct and manage innovative, safe, sustainable buildings in some of the most inhospitable and unstable regions of the world. He has also been on the Board of Trustees of the Architecture Foundation.
In 2012, Foster was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires.
Alfred Waterhouse's Manchester Town Hall, where Foster worked as a junior clerk
(Alfred Waterhouse's Manchester Town Hall, where Foster wo...)
The Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters
The HSBC Building in Hong Kong (1980)
The restored Reichstag in Berlin
30 St Mary Axe ('The Gherkin')
(30 St Mary Axe ('The Gherkin'))
The Hearst Tower
Other Work
Apple Park
Membership
He is the founder and chairman of Foster and Partners.
Foster was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) on 19 May 1983, and a Royal Academician (RA) on 26 June 1991. In 1995, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (HonFREng).
Connections
In 1964, he married architect Wendy Cheesman, who was one of the founding members of ‘Team 4’ and later established ‘Foster Associates’ with him in 1967. She succumbed to cancer in 1989. He has four sons from her.
He married Sabiha Rumani Malik in 1991 but they eventually divorced in 1995.
His present wife Elena Ochoa Foster, whom he married in 1996, is a psychopathologist.
Foster was made a Knight Bachelor (Kt) in the 1990 Birthday Honours and thereby granted the title sir. He was appointed to the Order of Merit (OM) in 1997. In the 1999 Birthday Honours, Foster's elevation to the peerage was announced in June 1999 and was raised to the peerage as Baron Foster of Thames Bank, of Reddish in the County of Greater Manchester in July.