Norman Foster
Norman Foster
Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank of Reddish, OM, HonFREngis a British architect whose company, Foster + Partners, maintains an international design practice famous for high-tech architecture...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth13 December 1903
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The only honourable work my parents knew was blue-collar. But while my father Robert ran a pawnbroker's shop, and my mother was a waitress, I moved into a middle-class world with a level of security they never knew.
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Surveys often show people would prefer a detached house with a lawn and driveway to an apartment. I understand this. It's not my place to presume to tell people where they can live. But perhaps that dream will simply not be possible in the future.
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We now think it hilarious that medieval streets were used as open sewers. Equally, our descendants will say: 'You won't believe this, but people were once allowed to hurl a couple of tons of dangerous metal around smashing into each other.'
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I love flying; I love aircraft, and you could say I've had a love affair with flight since I was a child. I travel a huge amount. I use airports, and as a pilot, I've flown in and out of airports thousands of times, so really, I have a fairly broad perspective.
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The Italians have long known what makes a livable town or city.
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You can find, occasionally, some absolutely fantastic things in hunting shops. I've got one jacket that I just happened across which is a kind of unwashed leather - completely anonymous but absolutely special.
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Joseph Bazalgette created a sewer system which he originally sized for London's needs of the time - he then doubled it to anticipate the future beyond. These are the qualities that I admire.
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When the Great Fire of London destroyed most of the medieval city in 1666, Christopher Wren was invited to design a new one. Within days, he had drawn up an elegant grid of broad boulevards leading to majestic squares, but it came to nothing - the existing landowners wanted things as they had been.
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I think cars encapsulate the history of innovation and style - it's the other side of the coin of the car being public enemy No.1.
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Anything that reduces fuel consumption and cuts down on greenhouse gasses is good news.
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There are those airports which make you feel better, and there are those airports that, when you go there, your heart sinks: you can't wait to get out of there. They both function as airports, but it's the things that you can't measure that make them different.
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Everything we design is a response to the specific climate and culture of a particular place.
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I travel continuously, and I see many cities, but there is nowhere like London.
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I describe the design process as like the tip of the iceberg. What you don't see is the long haul: all the endless auditing and things like that.