“Architecture is generated by people’s needs, both spiritual and material, and that has always been a guiding principle,” says Norman Foster, a Pritzker Prize winner and one of England’s preeminent architects. Born in Manchester, he was educated at the Yale School of Architecture, first set up practice in 1963 and now oversees a staff of 750 at his London office. Over the course of his career, he has developed a reputation for taking on sizable projects and reinvigorating historic structures with a modern look. Among Foster’s large, high-profile creations—the Beijing Airport, the renovation of the Reichstag in Berlin, the telecommunications tower in Barcelona—are also a number of private residences.

Ecological concerns are a hallmark of his design approach. “Environmental issues affect architecture at every level,” Lord Foster explains. “The location and function of a building, its flexibility and life span, its orientation, its form and structure, its heating and ventilation systems—and the materials—all impact upon the amount of energy used to build, run and maintain it.” Currently, he is working on a new residential tower in New York City whose glass sheathing will collect solar energy, much like his passive solar building in Duisberg, Germany, which produces more electricity than it needs. “Architects cannot solve all of the world’s problems,” says Foster, “but we can design buildings to run at a fraction of current energy levels.”

Norman Foster

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