Circular wood construction by Foster and Partners

Norman Foster was born in Manchester in 1935. After graduating from Manchester University’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, he won a Henry Fellowship for Yale University, where he got a Master of Architecture degree. He is the founder and chairman of Foster and Partners. Founded in London in 1967, it is now a global architecture firm, with project offices in more than twenty countries. Over the past four decades, the firm has been responsible for an astonishing range of work, from urban masterplans, public infrastructure, airports, civic and cultural buildings, offices and workplaces to private homes and product design with projects as diverse as the New German Parliament at the Reichstag in Berlin, Chek Lap Kok International Airport and Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong, Commerzbank’s headquarters in Frankfurt, Willis Faber & Dumas’ head office in Ipswich, and the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts in Norwich. He has received over 400 awards and mentions for excellence and has won numerous international and national competitions. He became the 21st Pritzker Architecture Prize winner in 1999. He has been awarded the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Architecture (1994), the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture (1983) and the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture (1991). In 1990 he was awarded a Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honors, and in 1999 he was honored with a Lifetime Knighthood, becoming Lord Foster of Thames Bank. He has been vice president of the Architectural Association of London, a member of the Council of the Royal College of Art and a founding member of the Architecture Foundation of London….