ADESPRN: 3 Architects to emulate: Norman Foster

Norman Foster was born in Reddish, Stockport, Greater Manchester, England, on June 1, 1935. He belongs to a middle class family. His father was a shop manager in a poor area of Manchester, later a security guard and a manual worker in a factory. Early in his life stood a great interest in architecture.

His parents sent him to a private and grammar school. He left school at the age of 16 and had several jobs. He worked for two years in the city treasurer's office. Then he studied commercial law, before leaving for national service in the royal air force. He then realized his passion and interest in architecture. When he came out of the air force. He worked in a bakery, sold furniture and worked factory.
Foster attended the University of Manchester's School of Architecture and City Planning and graduated in 1961. At the same year, at his age of 21, he won the Henry Fellowship to the Yale School of Architecture where finished his masters in architecture. At Yale, he met former business partner Richard Rogers. After a year of graduating at the states he went back to the UK and formed and associates with Rogers and their girlfriends, the sisters Georgie and Wendy Cheesman.

Norman was then married with Wendy Wolton. The company now is called Foster + Partners leaving Norman and his wife handling the international firm. Unfortunately Wendy died of cancer in 1989. He was married 3 times and the last was Elena Foster, a journalist. 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.

FOSTER + PATNERS

Norman Foster is now the founder and chairman of Foster + Partners. Founded in London in 1967, it is now a worldwide practice, with project offices in more than twenty countries. On 1968, Foster and his associates were given the chance of several projects, which changed his life. His development of an environmentally sensitive approach to design brought him his success. Over the past four decades the company has been responsible for a strikingly wide range of work, from urban master plans, public infrastructure, airports, civic and cultural buildings, offices and workplaces to private houses and product design. Since its inception, the practice has received 470 awards and citations for excellence and has won more than 86 international and national competitions.
His remarkable buildings and urban projects have transformed cityscapes, renewed transportation systems and restored city centers all over the world. Many of these aesthetically and technologically groundbreaking projects are based on ecology - conscious concepts, setting new standards for the interaction of buildings with their environment. Among his recent projects are some of the most remarkable architectural projects of the last years, including the reconstruction of the Reichstag in Berlin, the design of the great court at the British museum in London, the millennium bridge (the first new Thames crossing for more than 100 years), and the new Hong Kong international airport - the world’s largest airport terminal.

AWARDS:

Since its inception the practice has received more than 190 awards and citations for excellence and has won over 50 national and international competitions.

1968 - 1983 cooperation with Buckminster fuller on a number of projects. Foster was awarded the RIBA royal gold medal in 1983, and in 1990 the RIBA trustees medal was made for the Willis Faber Dumas building.

He was knighted in 1990, and received the gold medal of the AIA in 1994.

He was appointed officer of the order of the arts and letters by the ministry of culture in France in 1994. It was announced in the queen's birthday honors list on 12 June 1999 that sir Norman foster has been honored with a life peerage, taking the title lord foster of Thames bank.

He is the second British architect to win the Stirling Prize twice: the first for the American Air Museum 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, considered the Nobel Prize of architecture.

He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers and winner of the Minerva Medal, the Society's highest award.

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.

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.

In 2009 Foster was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award in the categorie Arts.