Architecture students who attended Norman Foster's talks at the end of the 1970s found that the architect, who was at the time of incipient fame, did not speak to them about Mickey Mouse, the Parthenon, or any other symptom of the postmodern irony prevailing at the time.
For Foster there was only one question: to solve problems with the available technology.
Those who attend a talk by Foster today will hear a similar speech, but sustained by 60 years of practice, an architecture studio that employs 1,500 people and the history of built work that, possibly, has most changed our cities and our way of understanding buildings in the last half century.
His clarity of ideas and unwavering faith in progress have left a trail of open-plan airports, green skyscrapers of unbelievable beauty, open shops like public squares and light-filled museums under undulating glass roofs.
Norman Foster skis and pilots airplanes.
He turned 85 in June, but nothing one can say about him applies to an octogenarian.
The pandemic has highlighted the fragility of almost everything, but not that of Lord Foster, who receives us via telematics at his home in St. Moritz (Switzerland), energetic, slender and impeccably dressed in white.
“I was the first in my family to go to university, and there, the only one who also had to work for a living.
But it was actually the best thing that could happen to me "
He turned 85 in the most unexpected of situations. How have you spent these months?
I've never been so busy!
And he hadn't been in one place for that long either.
I have stayed very well connected.
Unbelievably, the contest routine has continued.
You are not there, in Los Angeles, or in San Francisco, but you are there, communicating with sketches, conversations or videos.
Technology, combined with human ingenuity, has prevailed.
They ask me a lot if this pandemic will change things.
My point of view is that it will accelerate changes that were already inevitable.
The city of the future was going to be increasingly geared towards pedestrians and cyclists ... and during the pandemic more bike lanes have been built than ever.
But it was inevitable.
In Madrid this process does not seem so smooth.
Madrid Río was inaugurated nine years ago.
I always tell it in my talks and I talk about it to my students.
It is a beautiful and green project.
This pandemic has also given us back cars, which are suddenly safer than the subway.
There will be a time of transition in which some trends will be reversed.
The Spanish flu pandemic was much more devastating than the covid, at least for now.
It happened between 1918 and 1920, which was the foretaste of the Roaring Twenties and their boom in the construction of cinemas, which brought people together under one roof.
Something that shortly before would have been impossible.
It was not the era of the airport, but its equivalent.
What is true is that perhaps we should be ready to face more medical crises of this kind.
Foster at his study table in his home in ST.
Moritz.
Angela B. Suarez
Have any of your projects changed in this time or have you wished you had?
I think not.
This is similar to what happened after 9/11.
Some predicted the disappearance of the skyscrapers, but right away we were working on the Hearst building in New York and planning the Swiss Re tower in London.
The future of society is not in the distance of two meters between each person.
Those who have heard him speak admire his ability to get to the point.
When I talk to students and encourage them, I insist on two things: on being yourself and avoiding lip service, cultural pretensions.
There is a lot of optimism in their faith in design, technology, sustainability, and ultimately science. Is there room for optimism in today's world?
Optimism should not be confused with complacency, nor do I want to hide the reality that a very large part of the world's population is in a difficult situation, but, with some strange aberration, like the United States, quality and life expectancy remain getting better.
If you are an architect, you design for the future.
You have to be an optimist.
I suppose I was referring to a more political aspect. For example, reading about your building for the HSBC bank in Hong Kong, what is happening there came to my mind. Or the decline in freedoms in many European countries. I find it comforting that your optimism is so strong.
I share your hopelessness.
I am totally pro-European.
My children speak five or six languages.
Everything that goes up must come down.
The good part of the pandemic is that the effects of globalization will have to be reassessed: it has lifted millions of people out of poverty, yes, but it has also had terrible effects on industrial belts.
And pressing issues such as climate change must be reevaluated, which requires global action.
The negative is the political aspect, the small nations with their small nationalistic concerns.
Hopefully, with time, all that will level off.
“This is similar to what happened after 9/11.
Some predicted the disappearance of the skyscrapers.
But the future of society is not in the distance of two meters between each person "
The career of Norman Foster, born an only child into a humble family in Manchester, made the headlines with the HSBC building: a skyscraper inaugurated in 1986 that certified the architect's ability to apply his advanced ideas in tall buildings.
The skyscraper was not the classic glass tower but a complex structure that freed up the interior space and concentrated services and circulation systems on the façade, giving it the appearance of a huge habitable machine.
But the project with which he came to the forefront of public opinion was his reform of the Reichstag in 1999. With the reconstruction of the German Parliament, the architect showed that he was not only capable of technical feats.
Nor did he faint under the weight of responsibility: the Reichstag is "the personification of the democratic process, the symbol of Berlin, the symbol of German unification," explains Foster.
"That was a privilege."
Foster in his studio, with a model of the Swiss Re skyscraper in the background.
(Angela B. Suarez)
There, he expressed his social optimism by adding to the historic building a modern glass dome with a gazebo inside the building, so that visitors could watch their representatives at work.
This scheme - light, transparency, the search for the essence of a building and its meaning within the city - is one of its hallmarks of identity.
The footprint of the Reichstag is in the next Hall of Kingdoms, or what will be the definitive extension of Madrid's Prado Museum.
“It is a Madrid project, but its scope is much greater.
Let those paintings [the Royal Collections] return to their home, and restore that house, peel off the facade to the original 17th century, and also create a contemporary art gallery with 17 meters of open and flexible space ... does not exist.
This combination of looking far ahead and far back is extraordinary. "
He broke a barrier in his profession: social class.
I left school at the age of 16, started working for Manchester City Council, then did my military service and discovered architecture late, at 21. The dean liked my drawings but, as I did not meet the requirements, the university decided to create one A new category for me: at the end of the course they would give me a paper, like the others, but instead of putting a degree I would put a diploma.
When I applied for financial aid they denied it, telling me that they could not give me aid for college.
Instead, they offered me a place in art school and a scholarship.
I refused.
I was the first in my family to go to university, and there, the only one who also had to work for a living.
But it was actually the best thing that could happen to me, because I forced myself to prove to the authorities, and to everyone, that they had made a mistake.
What we regret, many times, we end up celebrating.
Isn't it difficult to transmit that willpower to much more privileged generations?
From my experience, young people are very resourceful and knowledgeable.
I have faith in the future, and in youth, but it is true: one of the problems of Western civilization is that it is becoming more risk-averse.
And it is not healthy.
You cannot design without risk.
Facade of Chesa Futura, residential building in St. Moritz.
(Angela B. Suarez)
If museums summed up the first decade of this century and airports the next, what buildings will define this one that has just begun?
The healthiest buildings.
Especially in the workplace, where it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between leisure and work.
For example, before all this, for the whole of last year, I was working in a Swiss town called La Punt on a project that tries to reverse the rural exodus by introducing a new job option.
A third place, in addition to your home and office, to spend time with your family in another place that offers you more facilities to play sports or to escape tourism.
I also see it in the large headquarters projects that we have developed: Apple Park, in Silicon Valley, is in a park of 71 hectares of which 57 are occupied by a park with 10,000 trees, with bike and jogging lanes, and a wellness center better than many five-star hotels.
Is it more difficult to work with politicians, with businessmen or with private clients?
The good thing is dealing with people who care about the building, because it means that they care about who will inhabit it.
Those people are the ones who make you pass as an architect the worst.
The most difficult, however, is bureaucracy, which can even exist in families.
Because it is not a question of size.
Apple is a huge company, but it all started with a call from Steve Jobs.
And Michael Bloomberg personally took care of every detail of the design of his London headquarters.
The opposite is when everything is diluted in focus groups.
He must have had a master's degree in delicate projects when he designed the Reichstag. Now everything is sensitive material, everything can catch fire. Do you ever have the feeling of walking on broken glass?
In this era, so surprising in its political correctness, those who have the courage to speak out in favor of science and against mysticisms, against the inventions of politicians, and to speak for the rational, for the moral ... These individuals inspire respect .
The feminist and queer movements have sparked an examination of conscience in all industries. Also in its architecture?
When we started Foster + Partners, we were a husband and wife team.
And we grew up exploring this problem: our first project, the one that provided us all the others, was in the Docklands.
We fought for racial equality, for working conditions, for workers to be under the same roof as management.
This was revolutionary in the London of the sixties, in the East End, the poorest part of the city.
Today there are still many prejudices and they must be fought.
There are young studios that do a very theoretical architecture, even political, like in the sixties.
My priority is to focus on reducing a building's carbon footprint.
In what improves people's quality of life, that makes them healthier and happier.
That's what interests me.
Foster drawing in his studio (Ángela B. Suarez)
Do you ever think about retiring?
Why should I do it?
You can follow ICON on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or subscribe here to the Newsletter.