Architect Day: Sir Norman Foster

by GenCept | January 19, 2010

With a vast and fair amount of awards received, Sir Norman Foster, is one of the best portfolios of architecture in the world. His works are functional, well established and with a unique beauty, taking advantage of the brilliant and detailed structures used, reach a final result perfectly balanced.

Photos via: fosterandpartners.com.

Born on June 1st, 1935 in the town of Reddish, England. At 16 he left school and went to work at Manchester City Treasurer's Office, before joining National Service in the Royal Air Force. In 1956 he entered the Manchester University School of Architecture and City Planning, graduating in 1961.

He won the Henry Fellowship at Yale School of Architecture where he met Richard Rogers who would eventually become his business partner, and where he also got his master's degree. After that he traveled for a year around the United States before returning to the United Kingdom in 1963.

Architect Day: Norman Foster
StockleyPark Offices, Uxbridge, UK

Influences

He had always been a model student and his skills showed a remarkable flair for architecture. But he still always came under the influence of architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.

After his return from America, Norman Foster started a partnership with Richard Rogers and sisters Georgie and Wendy Cheesman, called Team 4. They quickly gained a reputation for industrial design high-tech. In 1967, he formed with Wendy the office Fosters Associates which quickly transformed into Fosters and Partners. A year later he began a long partnership with the American architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, which only ended with the death of Fuller in 1983.

Architect Day: Norman Foster
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, UK

Architect Day: Norman Foster

Architect Day: Norman Foster
Hong Kong and Shangai Bank Headquarters, Hong Kong, China

“ My mission is to create a structure that is sensitive to the culture and climate of its place..”

Works

The project that generated the first major recognition of the firm Foster and Partners was the Willis Faber and Dumas headquarters in Ipswich in 1974.

Architect Day: Norman Foster < /p>

Architect Day: Norman Foster
Willis Faber and Dumas headquarters, Ipswich, UK

Today, Foster and Partners work with collaborating engineering to integrate complex computer systems with the most basic laws of physics. This allows you to create and develop complex structures, original and challenging, clearly seen in some of his works.

Foster's career already has more than 470 awards and citations for excellence and has won over 86 national and international competitions. In 1990 he was awarded the Queen's Birthday Honors in 1997 and by that honor he became known as Lord Foster of Thames Bank.

“Control is the wrong word. The practice is very much about sharing, and, in any creative practice, some individuals, whether partners or directors, are much closer to certain projects than I could ever be.”