The Norman Foster Studio: Consistency Through Diversity

The Norman Foster Studio: consistency through diversity The Norman Foster Studio: consistency through diversity Malcolm Quantrill E & FN SPON An Imprint of Routledge London and New York First published 1999 by E & FN Spon an imprint of Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy copy of this or any of taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of ebooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 © 1999 Malcolm Quantrill All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or repro duced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-36230-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-37908-X (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0 419 19750 8 (Print Edition) Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Preface Acknowledgements Illustration acknowledgements vi viii x The emergence of an architect The body of practice Construct, context and subtext The body of architecture Prospect 1 33 85 195 255 Index 286 Preface Shortly after my arrival in Tokyo in April 1991, Toshio Nakamura, editor of the Japanese journal Architecture and Urbanism, telephoned and invited me for lunch “to meet some other architects”. Both were from Foster Associates: Chris Seddon (one of the Foster directors) and a Swiss colleague, Hans Brouwer. The next day, I went on site with Chris Seddon for a tour of Foster’s Century Tower, which was close to completion. I had first become acquainted with the work of Foster Associates in the late 1970s through the Willis Faber & Dumas building and the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts—both in my native East Anglia—but it was in Tokyo during May 1991 that I really came under the spell of Foster’s architecture when I visited Century Tower. As a result of a subsequent visit to Tokyo in September 1991, my article “Century symbol” appeared in The Architectural Review, and I met Sir Norman Foster for the first time. In July 1992 I received his permission to prepare this monograph, and early in 1993 I began working in the Foster archives. Throughout the entire process of dialogues, correspondence, selecting pertinent projects, reviewing possible illustrations, and the gathering of material for the writing of this book, I have had the invaluable collaboration of Norman himself, as well as that of his partners Spencer de Grey, David Nelson, Graham Phillips and Ken Shuttleworth. From the outset, I believed it was essential to include a personal portrait of Norman Foster, not simply as an extended review of his career decade by decade, but as an insight into his extraordinary talents and accomplishments. I persuaded Norman of the value of such a contribution, which could be shaped only if he agreed to share his early recollections with me.