Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Norman Foster
Norman Robert (Lord) Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank OM Kt (born June 1, 1935) is a British architect.
Foster was born in Manchester and educated at the University of Manchester and at Yale University. He worked for the visionary Buckminster Fuller before meeting with Richard Rogers, creating Team 4 and in 1967 Foster Associates.
His designs were originally a stylish, machine influenced high-tech but he has moved away from this to a more sublime, more acceptable sharp-edged modernity.
Known to some in the UK - pejoratively - as an über- or superstar-architect, the accusation being that certain architects are given preferential status based on their fame.
He has had an extremely successful career including:
- Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at University of East Anglia in Norwich
- Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt
- HSBC Tower and the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong
- Terminal building at Stansted Airport
- metro of Bilbao, Spain
- Lionel Robbins Library renovation, London School of Economics
- Carre d'Art, Nīmes, France (1993)
- Redevelopment of the Great Court of the British Museum (1999)
- Millennium Bridge in London (1999)
- Glass dome for the Reichstag redevelopment in Berlin (1999)
- Greater London Authority Building - London City Hall (2000)
- La Poterie metro station, Rennes, France (2001)
- 30 St Mary Axe - Swiss Re headquarters (2003)
- The Sage Gateshead (2004)
- Millau Viaduct - France (2004)
He was knighted in 1990 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1997. In 1999 he was created a life peer. Foster is known by the British tabloid newspapers as "Lord Wobbly", due to structural problems with his Millennium Bridge. He has been criticised for his treatment of an arts charity, the Couper Collection, located next door to his London offices and home. See article.
Norman Foster is the second UK architect to win the Stirling Prize twice: once for the American Hanger and the Imperial War Museum Duxford in 1998 and again for 30 St Mary Axe in 2004. In consideration of his whole portfolio, Foster was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1999.
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