Norman Foster: The Man Who Changed the Way the World Looks

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Table of Contents

The Way It All Began: Foster’s Biography
Genius and His Works
What the Future Will Look Like
Reference List

The Way It All Began: Foster’s Biography

The world is full of wonderful things that people can watch and admire. And as they watch, they feel the urge to create something on their own to compete with nature. We must admit that though there is no way to win this competition, some people have achieved a certain result in making the world look brighter. Norman Foster is one of those lucky people.

He has rather an ordinary background, not the one of a millionaire’s heir, and neither poverty that rose from the ashes to the top of the modern world. His parents, a school teacher, and a factory worker gave him the best of upbringing that they could. He studied in grammar school and a private school for a while, but then h had to earn the money on his own, and there was no way for him to combine both studying and working. That was a tough period in his life, and it has taught him that the path of an adult person is far not that easy in this man’s, man’s world. So off he went with his ideas and plans for a further career. At that time he was working in the city’s treasurer’s office and at the same time, he managed to study the law. His ability to do several things at once and with a brilliant result was astonishing.

Several years later he was serving in the Royal Air Force. Foster made a good and disciplined soldier, and meanwhile, he was taking a deep interest in architecture. As he left the Force, he worked in a factory, sold furniture, even tried working as a baker… Soon he entered the Manchester University School of Architecture and City planning. It was 1961, and he was only 21. This very year was marked by his winning a fellowship to Yale University. He got a Master’s degree and got acquainted with Richard Rogers. They started working together, and that resulted in creating Foster Associates in 1967. (Foster 2004)

The number of awards he gained is unbelievable, and the total 190 rewards he got are far beyond the imagination of any artist. This is something that a man can not only be proud of but also consider the achievement of a lifetime.

In my opinion, what makes him the designer that makes the difference is that he is trying to convey his ideas the way no one else has ever tried. This is something that represents a complete novelty to the modern designers and artists, and the things that he contributes to art as it is are priceless – I mean, they are beyond valuing, beyond the notions of good or bad.

Genius and His Works

Thus, one of their greatest achievements was the design of the Reichstag the way we can see it now. A roof of glass, transparent to remind people that the government that is there is just as transparent and open to the people (Schultz, 2000), is the idea of Norman Foster. His thought could fly high like an eagle and see the world from the bird’s view.

He has survived through the times when he was guided not by the muse of architecture, but by the desire to earn his living. These were the 70ies when the time has come for him to “demonstrate his skill in the design of office and the industrial buildings. But this period has also given him his first opportunity to build for the public.” (Treiber 1995). His attempts to make architecture serve people and embody the ideas and the vision of the artist was a success, and he went on creating the new wonderful forms and shapes of buildings and their décor.

It was a remarkable moment in his life, and the result of it was the beautiful building of the Hammersmith Centre scheme for the London Transport Executive. The scheme depicted a brand new concept of a building, and this could not have passed unnoticed by the public and the officials. The government was more than satisfied with the result and granted Foster another award. From that day on he was a recognized specialist in the architectural field and a model for the younger artists and architects.

The ways of the famous designer are something that people have never thought about before.

The thing that deserves to be talked about alone is Foster’s idea of the Shanghai skyscraper (Pawley 1999). That was a breakthrough in the history of architecture, for no one had ever used the method and the design that Foster created. Its main feature was the complexity of service sectors, which were a novelty to the very last detail.

He also drew the principles of building the skyscraper of the XXI century. These included the idea of transparency, which suggested the use of a big amount of glass. It was almost the same as the one he used for creating the design of the Reichstag in Germany, with openness as the leading clue to the whole design.

One of his great achievements was also the design of the office landscape. The office people are a specific “nationality”, which determines a specific surrounding to achieve better results. So Foster applied the following scheme to their environment:

In the case of the Hong Kong Bank, it is not only the factual but also the visual unification of the different company sectors that conveys a positive image in which performance is linked with openness to the future (Treiber 1995).

What the Future Will Look Like

To sum up, Norman Foster is the man who has created the new vision of architecture and contributed to its development. He has all grounds to be called the man who has made the difference in architecture and the ideas of the modern world. This is the person which can be a decent model for future architects and who can create something meaningful, something that fills our lives with sense. He is the man of the XXI century, but he is looking forth in the XXII one and is trying to put the ideas of the future into practice.

Reference List

Treiber, D. (1995) Norman Foster. New York, Taylor & Francis.

Foster, N. and Jenkins, D.(2004) Norman Foster: Works. California: Prestel.

Pawley, M. and Foster, N. (1999) Norman Foster: A Global Architecture. Olympia, WA: Universe.

Schultz, B. and Foster, N. (2000) The Reichstag: The Parliament Building by Norman Foster. California: Prestel.

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Norman Foster: The Man Who Changed the Way the World Looks

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