Norman Foster
The art of the superlative

During a ceremony held in London on the 2 nd of May of this year, Lord Norman Foster was named Ť The Most Admired Living Architect ť. If this British architect heads the pack of great contemporary architects, it is no coincidence. Over the past forty years or so, Norman Foster has come up with a remarkable body of work, both in terms of the size and complexity of many of his commissions and in terms of the originality and the strong presence of the structures that make up his constructions. “Structure in buildings gives an order, a discipline”, the architect likes to say “and, in this sense, it can be described as an architectural theme”. The talent of Foster & Partners comes through in each project as it conjures up construction systems that are at the same time ingenious, adapted to the programmes and decisive for the building's essential image. Take the cupola for the Berlin Reichstag (1995-1999), whose architecture cultivates transparency and allows for an open internal space, in a relationship of reciprocity with the outside.

The firm rigorously supervises the manufacture of the parts that go into the construction. From design to production, all the parts are produced using cutting edge techniques and with a constant concern for economy – the buildings are designed according to a strategy of low energy consumption – and set out to bring out the mechanical and expressive potential of the materials chosen. But beyond technology, each project exudes an emotional dimension, detectable in the irreproachable execution of each component of the building.

Nevertheless, Foster does not consider himself as a creator of a style. Even the recent projects and the work in progress show that the architectural forms are not preconceived but appear to be engendered by circumstances that are specific to each new building. This conceptual method is based on a rationality without theoretical or aesthetical preconceptions. This categorical rejection of formalism seems however contradicted by the ogival form of the Daewoo tower (Seoul 1997-2000) or of Swiss Re (London 1997 – 2004).

More often than not, his architecture reaches monumental dimensions, sometimes due to the scale of the structure, more generally by his knack of opening up the internal spaces. At the end of the day, what Foster seeks to achieve is harmony between the technical and the poetic, between the constructed and the natural, between new and old, in order to allow the individual to find fulfilment in diversity and complexity.