Norman Foster (architect)

Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM, FRIBA, FCSD, RDI (born 1 June 1935) is an English architect. His company has an international design practice. He is the United Kingdom's biggest builder of landmark office buildings.

Foster was born in Reddish, Stockport, England, to a working-class family. He did well at school and became interested in architecture. Foster was particularly interested in the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier.

He left school at 16 and worked in the Manchester City Treasurer's office. Next he joined the National Service in the Royal Air Force. After he was discharged, in 1956 Foster attended the University of Manchester's School of Architecture and City Planning. He graduated in 1961. He earned his Master's degree at the Yale School of Architecture. He then travelled in America for a year. He returned to the UK in 1963. Then he set up an architectural practice as Team 4. Team 4 quickly earned a reputation for high-tech industrial design. After Team 4 broke up, in 1967 Foster and Wendy Cheesman started Foster Associates. This later became Foster and Partners. From 1968, Foster worked with American architect Richard Buckminster Fuller until Fuller died in 1983. They worked on several projects that became important in the development of an environmentally sensitive approach to design.

Foster + Partners' first important building in the UK was the Willis Faber & Dumas headquarters in Ipswich, from 1974. The client was a family firm insurance company which wanted to restore a sense of community to the workplace. Foster created open-plan office floors long before open-plan became the standard. In a town that did not have a lot of public facilities, the roof gardens, 25m swimming pool and gymnasium are good benefits for the company's 1,200 employees. The building is wrapped in a full-height glass facade. This wall follows the medieval street plan. The facade shifts from opaque, reflective black to a glowing backlit transparency as the sun sets.

Today, Foster + Partners works with its engineers to use computer systems. They pay attention to basic physical laws such as convection. They have created efficient buildings like the Swiss Re London headquarters. The walls let in air for passive cooling and then let it out as it warms and rises.

Foster was knighted in 1990 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1997. In 1999, he was created a life peer, as Baron Foster of Thames Bank. He is the second British architect to win the Stirling Prize twice.

Foster married business partner Wendy Cheesman. She died in 1989, leaving him with four sons. He next married Indian-born Begum Sabiha Rumani Malik. Foster and Sabiha divorced in 1998. Foster is now married to Elena Ochoa, Chairman of the Tate International Council, and founder of Ivory Press. He has five children and three grandchildren.

Foster flies his own private jet and helicopter between his homes in London, France, and Switzerland.