Norman Foster

Norman Foster is Executive Chairman and Founder of Foster + Partners, one of the most influential architectural design firms shaping cities across the world. His projects include the Reichstag in Berlin, the Great Court of the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, airports in Hong Kong and Beijing and headquarters buildings for Hearst (New York), Apple (Cupertino), Bloomberg (London), Comcast (Philadelphia) and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (Hong Kong). His current research projects, in association with The European Space Agency and NASA, are exploring solutions for the creation of habitations on the Moon and Mars. He is President of the Norman Foster Foundation, based in Madrid with a global reach, promoting interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects, designers and urbanists anticipate the future. In 1999, he was honored by The Queen with a life peerage, taking the title Lord Foster of Thames Bank.

From museums and banks to airports and bridges, from apartment buildings to the Reichstag, in the past 35 years Norman Foster's beautiful and efficient designs have dramatically changed the character of cities (think of the London Gherkin) and landscapes (the Viaduc de Millau) around the world.

A common philosophy connects all of them, starting with social responsiveness and the use of natural resources (ventilation, light). Some of Foster's work has sparked controversy (such as his pyramid in Astana, Kazakhstan), but he has never ignored a chance to rewrite the rules of architecture , be it by tackling audaciously huge construction projects or by designing wind turbines and partly-solar-powered electric buses.