About this talk

Running time: 27 minutes

Norman Foster and his wife/partner started practising architecture in 1962 with Richard Rogers (see Genesis Of The New Lloyd's Underwriting Room and People Places) as Team 4. Separating from him in 1967, they established Foster Associates and rose straight to the top of profession, winning the international Reynolds Aluminium Prize in both 1978 and 1979.

The work of the practice has always shown a steady progression and development of ideas. Flexibility to accommodate change, the social implications of design, energy conservation and harvesting, the full integration of services, interior and furniture design, the application of new technologies in an appropriate way, and project management techniques have been developed through many buildings.

There is continuing interest in the separation of the short-life systems or parts of a building from the long-life ones. The relationship between theory and design is a recurring theme. And the close collaboration with Buckminster Fuller (see The Story Of A Quest) over the twelve years before this recording in the USA and Europe further inspired the desire to do more with less in the search for higher performance solutions.

In this context there has been an increasing tendency to utilise the potential of newer technologies, particularly the aerospace and automobile industries, but also shipbuilding.

This is the first of Foster's talks for us; Exploring The City came in 2001, followed by Chateau Margaux, France in 2015.

Please note that a transcript of this talk is available - please contact us for further details.