Sir Norman Foster is, without doubt, one of the most innovative and important architects in contemporary construction, though he is by no means radical. Born in Manchester in 1935, he moved to America in the early sixties with his diploma in Architecture and Town Planning to obtain a Master's Degree at Yale.

After working for a while as a consultant in town development projects, in 1963 he set up Team 4. After just four years the team broke up and he opened his own office, Norman Foster Associates.

From then on he began to push the envelope in terms of his personal guiding principles to produce a blend of aesthetic and functional architecture, technology-based engineering and quality design. Examples of his style include the Willis Faber and Dumas building in Ipswich, the Hammersmith Centre in London, the Sainsbury Centre of Visual Art in Norwich, the Renault centre in Swindon and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Nimes.

In the nineteen-eighties he began to produce true landmark works such as the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank, Stanstead Airport (London) and the Communications Tower for Barcelona '92.
The Bilbao Metro and the new Hong-Kong airport, one of his most ambitious projects to date, will continue to increase the legend of this master of the minimalist and the high-tech.

www.fosterandpartners.com