British - Architect | June 1, 1935 -
You cannot separate the buildings out from the infrastructure of cites and the mobility of transit.
Norman Foster
YouBuildingsOutInfrastructure
I love flying; I love aircraft, and you could say I've had a love affair with flight since I was a child. I travel a huge amount. I use airports, and as a pilot, I've flown in and out of airports thousands of times, so really, I have a fairly broad perspective.
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The most amazing lesson in aerodynamics I ever had was the day I climbed a thermal in a glider at the same time as an eagle. I witnessed, close up, effortlessness and lightness combined with strength, precision and determination.
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As an architect, you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.
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Everything we design is a response to the specific climate and culture of a particular place.
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There's a snobbery at work in architecture. The subject is too often treated as a fine art, delicately wrapped in mumbo-jumbo. In reality, it's an all-embracing discipline taking in science, art, maths, engineering, climate, nature, politics, economics.
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I travel continuously, and I see many cities, but there is nowhere like London.
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Manhattan, one of the most moneyed spots on the planet, also has one of the greatest concentrations of people in its skyscrapers. It's also, of course, the place where every architect wants to build his tower.
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There are those airports which make you feel better, and there are those airports that, when you go there, your heart sinks: you can't wait to get out of there. They both function as airports, but it's the things that you can't measure that make them different.
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Anything that reduces fuel consumption and cuts down on greenhouse gasses is good news.
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I describe the design process as like the tip of the iceberg. What you don't see is the long haul: all the endless auditing and things like that.
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Joseph Bazalgette created a sewer system which he originally sized for London's needs of the time - he then doubled it to anticipate the future beyond. These are the qualities that I admire.
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