Foster, Norman Robert, Lord Foster of Thames Bank

Foster, Norman Robert, Lord Foster of Thames Bank (1935- ), British architect, one of the principal figures in international Modernist architecture since the early 1980s. He was born in Manchester, and studied architecture and town planning at Manchester University, then at Yale University in the United States. On his return to London, Foster, Richard Rogers (who had been a fellow student at Yale), Wendy Cheesman (who became Foster's first wife), and Su Rogers set up the architectural practice Team 4 Architects (1963-1967). It was in this practice that they established their reputations both for housing projects and for industrial buildings. From 1968 to 1983 Foster also collaborated with Buckminster Fuller on various projects.

Beginning with spare, simple designs with little exterior ornamentation, such as the Reliance Controls building in Swindon (1966), Foster's style has developed a greater use of curved lines and a wide range of building materials. An important step was marked by the Willis Faber & Dumas building in Ipswich (1979), in which the glass walls elegantly curve to enclose the maximum possible area of the awkwardly shaped mid-town site. An important aspect of Foster's work is his control over all the features of interior design, such as door handles and lighting fixtures, as well as the structural parts of the building, giving his work an unusual degree of unity. An example of this level of detail can be seen in the terminal building at Stansted Airport in Essex (1991), where the large structural cross-braces on the exterior are mirrored by the smaller filigree of metal bracing in the interior roof supports, both echoing the wires and cross-braces in the wings of early biplanes. An example of Foster's work that is unusually opulent both in its detail and in its overall conception is the headquarters of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in Hong Kong (1986), which is considered by many to be Foster's masterpiece. Reputedly among the most expensive buildings ever constructed, it is made of the highest-quality materials throughout, and has won many awards for its design and construction.

Another aspect of Foster's work that stems from his earliest training is his interest in town planning, reflected in a number of “masterplans” for various cities (including Berlin and Cannes) and for areas within cities, such as King's Cross in London (1988), and the site of Expo '98 in Lisbon. He has also designed a complete underground system for Bilbao, Spain; Hong Kong's new airport at Chek Lap Kok; the redeveloped Reichstag building in Berlin for the new German parliament; and the world’s highest road bridge, the Millau Bridge over the River Tarn in France. In Britain, projects have included the redevelopment of the Great Court and Reading Room at the British Museum, London; the Millennium Bridge, a new pedestrian suspension bridge over the Thames linking St Paul’s Cathedral with the Tate Modern; the Great Glasshouse at the National Botanic Garden of Wales; the home of the new Greater London Authority near Tower Bridge; the Stirling-Prize-winning Swiss Re Tower (30 St Mary Axe) in the City of London; and the Sage Gateshead music centre near Newcastle upon Tyne. In 2006 his design for one of three skyscrapers to be built alongside the Freedom Tower on the site of the former World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York, was unveiled. The tallest of the three, Foster’s glass building features four slanting diamond-shaped surfaces at its apex intended to point towards a memorial park.

Foster was knighted in 1990, and was made a member of the Order of Merit, Britain's highest honour, in 1997. He was granted a life peerage in the Queen’s birthday honours in 1999. In the same year he was the recipient of the Pritzker Prize, considered to be one of the most prestigious annual awards for architecture.