Norman foster

Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, is a British architect whose company maintains an international design practice. He is Britain's most prolific builder of landmark office buildings

Biography.
Norman Foster was born in Manchester in 1935, to a working-class family. Leaving school at 16, he worked in the Manchester City Treasurer's office before joining National Service in theRoyal Air Force. In 1956 Foster attended the University of Manchester's School of Architecture and City Planning. He took an interest in the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer. He won the Henry Fellowship to the Yale School of Architecture, where he met future business partner Richard Rogers and earned his Master's degree. In 1963 where he setup an architectural practice as Team 4 ; after that, in 1967 Foster founded Foster Associates, which later became Foster and Partners. It is now a worldwide practice, with project offices in more than twenty countries. Over the past four decades the company has been responsible for a strikingly wide range of work, from urban masterplans, public infrastructure, airports, civic and culturalbuildings, offices and workplaces to private houses and product design. Since its inception, the practice has received 470 awards and citations for excellence and has won more than 86 international and national competitions.

Style and desing.
Modernism gets its good name back from Norman Foster. In its earliest stirrings, almost a century ago, architectural Modernism was an idealist notion. Itattracted men and women who proposed to make a better world through uncluttered design. But by the 70s, Modernism had declined into a realm of boxy clichés. The London-based Foster, 72, was one of the architects who turned things around by proving that to make good buildings, it would not be necessary to abandon the principles of Modernism—clear structure, lucid forms—but simply to apply them with newrigor and imagination. During the past 25 years, Foster has been the architect behind some of the most famous additions to the global skyline, including the Swiss Re headquarters in London that everybody calls the Gherkin and the Hearst Tower in New York City.

Buildings.
30 St Mary Axe, also known as the Gherkin and the Swiss Re Building, is a skyscraper in London's main financial districtcompleted in December 2003 and opened at the end of May 2004. With 40 floors, the tower is 190 metres (623 ft) tall, and stands on the former site of the Baltic Exchange building. The primary occupant of the building is Swiss Re, a global reinsurance company, who had the building commissioned as the head office for their UK operation. The tower is sometimes known as "Swiss Re Tower", although this nameis not official. The building uses energy-saving methods which allow it to use half the power a similar tower would typically consume.[15] Gaps in each floor create six shafts that serve as a natural ventilation system for the entire building even though required firebreaks on every sixth floor interrupt the "chimney." The shafts create a giant double glazing effect; air is sandwiched between twolayers of glazing and insulates the office space inside. Since its completion, the building has won a number of prestigious awards for architecture. In October 2004, the building was awarded the 2004 RIBA Stirling Prize. For the first time in the prize's history, the judges reached a unanimous decision. Wembley Stadium, London, UK, 1996-2007 Wembley Stadium was designed by architects Foster +Partners and built by Australian company Brookfield Multiplex and funded by Sport England. It is one of the most expensive stadiums ever built at a cost of £798 million (After New Meadowlands Stadium). At almost four times the height of the original, covering twice the area, and with 90,000 seats, the new Wembley Stadium is the largest covered football stadium in the world. The key feature of the...