Foster - Norman
Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM, RA, HonFREng, Architect* - has promoted the idea of the sustainable city; a dense
city where services are nearby, accessible by walking, not just
reachable with the use of a motor car, be it powered by petrol,
diesel, hydrogen, or batteries.# While he has made his name designing
large, high-tech,^ stand alone, iconic structures in cities, and
slick airports on their outskirts, he now tells us that his real
interest is not his collection of cars or his eye-catching buildings,
but the spaces between. He tells us he is interested in places that
enrich lives. His words repeat most of the cliches used for civic
places discussed as being ‘meaningful’ for people, or how they
might become this. He argues that his ambitions now are not just
environmental, a strategy we have seen promoted in some of the recent
work, but that the ‘place’ issue, whatever this means, is
important too. One wonders why it took him so long to realise this;
it was raised as an issue in the 1960’s: see Aldo van Eyck in
Alison Smithson’s Team 10 Primer, Studio Vista, 1968 –
‘place not space.’+
So what might
Foster’s city be like? It is high-rise; but one does not know if
this is the 1970’s height that research defined as being the
maximum for feeling contact with the ground - 7 stories - or more,
perhaps suggesting something like an array of the new Manhattan
residential sticks and spikes: who knows?
Foster has set up
his own institute in Madrid to foster (sorry) the development of his
ideas and ideals, noting that it will take more than architects to
achieve these preferred outcomes, whatever they might be. He speaks
of engaging mayors, environmentalists, and others, even planners. It seems to me that it has been the planners who have made the biggest mess of our cities with their unfettered
power and sly methodologies using private negotiations to get what
they might perceive to be the best outcome in the particular set of
circumstances at the time, a strategy involving politics and
perceptions to justify any outcome, whatever might be agreed, with
clever, distorting spin, irrespective of what the formal plan might
define. Sometimes, when decisions are enforced, courts turn matters
around in response to cunning arguments.
It is interesting
that Foster praises Abercrombie’s plan for London, noting how it
has successfully managed matters; but Foster fails to mention how his
gherkin was one of the first buildings to raise the city’s height
to challenge St. Paul’s, apparently ignoring this plan; or that he
very much wanted another tall structure adjacent to this cone. It was
a project rejected by the city as it seemed to be just too greedy for
floor area and height on such a small parcel of land. In spite of the
effort and enthusiasm for his ideas, we have no idea of what a Foster
vision for a city might be as form and space. Does one envisage a
Corbusian set of highrise structures only less formally arranged;
perhaps more scrambled into an organic mass - or is it ‘mess’
that might be the better word to use?
Is Foster keen on
the Neom model of the city – the ‘placemakers’ in the desert
designing a city 170 kilometres long between two parallel walls of
mirrored glass?+ Who knows? It seems that everything is much safer
and more flexibly viable when left as words that allow everyone to
make the best interpretation they might be happy with. Whatever form
it might take - what does Foster teach, preach on this? - the city
for people must be compact, not only for convenience in dwelling, but
also for convenience in and for the viability of public transport.
The role of the automobile needs to be defined and controlled too.
Can we really just do away with cars?
One knows today that
the continued manufacturing of millions of cars every year is simply
stupid and irresponsible, even if all of these are EVs. Our streets
and highways are already chocked with single-person vehicles,
machines that have become essential because, with the sprawling
development of cities, public transport is only available for a few
on foot, and for others in vehicles who drive and park - no great
number that would easily solve our congestion problems - offering
just sufficient inconvenience to ensure that vehicle sales will
increase exponentially. One has to ask: what is the real
environmental impact of EVs that are supposed to save our world?
Having this enormous clutter of vehicles to try to accommodate within
a city, leaves cities being developed as places for vehicular
movement and their storage instead of being places for people. This
approach to cities has to continue as long as we keep putting more
and more cars onto the roads; it is the rational and necessary
outcome whatever the grand ideas might be. Currently there is no
intention to limit the manufacture of vehicles; indeed, there are
more and more being manufactured under the ironic guise that this
strategy will save our world.
The words that
outline hopes for different cities might be easy to recite as pieces
of poetry - as ‘poetic,’ design thought - but real, hard
decisions are essential if our places are going to be enriched and
enlivened: there is no compromise with vehicles and their
requirements. New and redeveloped cities have to make decisions about
their topology and services - how these change - as well as being
prepared to be tough with innovations like drones and flying cars
that individuals and companies are presently working on, as though
our future depended on them: when it doesn’t. Walking is the core
matter of any and all engagements with place.
Foster has been
criticised for holding his views while the company is happily
designing large airports across the word, perpetuating this form of
transport that also relies on the road vehicle for access. He
rationalises this conflict by arguing that quick transport is
critical for the economy. So should his new city become towers with
roof-top landing platforms instead of gardens? Will Foster forget his
love for helicopters?#
Still, with all of
this, we know nothing of a ‘Foster city’ other than that it will
be better than what we have . . . hopefully; maybe. One could argue
that this places the ambition very low given the mess that our cities
are currently in: it would not take much to improve them just a
little, such is their poor state.
Whatever form our
new cities might take, they will require planning for the management
of action. So it is that the art of framing words as ideas that can
define and control outcomes is critical; and that the proper and
precise enforcement of the plan is essential. This means that
planners, those who plan, are the core of this situation. One has to
ask: can we rely on them? Given the past, one has to wonder about
this, and consider the possibility that Foster might be wrong: that
we must rely on architects to achieve the vision . . . whatever it
might be; to be the driving force for change. The sooner we can see the model, the sooner we can offer
true critiques based on something more substantial than words. Frank Lloyd wright had his clear vision for Broadacre City and modelled it for all to see. It would be good for Baron Foster to do likewise instead of exercising his promotional skills.
#
A walkable city or
suburb needs more than an ambition for proximity. There is much talk
about a 'five-or-ten-minute' city, as if time was the critical issue.
Much more is involved; things subtle and experiential. One might only
be a few minutes away from some shop, but the decision to walk to and
from this destination and not to drive, will depend of the
circumstances - the weather - a hot, cold, or wet day, e.g.; the
urgency - caught short while cooking or just as the guests arrive,
e.g.; and the terrain - hills; and the tasks involved: might it be a
big shop with multiple heavy bags?; then there is one’s well-being
and general health, as well as a variety of other complex matters
that will determine the use of the vehicle rather than walking,
irrespective of distance or an urban planner’s intentions. Of
course, as well as all of these matters, the experience of the walk
itself is critical: is it safe? is it beautiful? Does it entail a
walk through a concrete tunnel under a freeway or railway; or is it a
stroll along a canal or lake?
Just talking about a
walking city is meaningless, because there are so many subtle matters
that arise to thwart the intentions. How can planners accommodate all
of these? We really have no idea because the form of the ‘ideal’
city, its spaces and places, and details, are all unknown. It is this
lack of any suggested outcome that is a serious problem.
“The ideal city we would advocate is dense, compact, walkable, and user-friendly."
Baron Norman Foster
What are the forms
and details of a city that is truly ‘five-or-ten-minutes’
accessible? How is public transport fitted into this pattern so as to
make it the preferred form of travel? We all know the problem of
public transport in the sprawling city, where private vehicles are
needed to access this convenience that usually terminates in the
least convenient part of the city.
A new sustainable
city needs to be shaped and detailed so it can be tested. It has to
be something other than more of the same covered in green fuzz to
make it ‘environmental.’ Words need to give way to prototypes and
models that can highlight the ‘engineering of place’ - present it
with the clarity of an engineering drawing, or one prepared for a
copyright application. Clever AI images are not enough. We have seen
how drawings can cajole and cheat ambitions in the work of Archigram.
True rigour is needed.
Foster is a tech
freak who is enthused by much more than cars. A colleague tells of
being surprised years ago when Foster’s helicopter landed at his
Sainsbury Centre being visited. Foster was delighted to be able to
show this young architect around. Might this soon be a flying car? A
robot? Are we to see fully-automated, robot cities? Maybe walking is just too old
fashioned? Could Baron Foster really resist such nerdish
delights? He didn’t resist the peerage.
Dare one suggest that the world needs saving from Foster? All illustrations here are 'Foster' towers - (with airports below) - tackling the challenge to be the tallest of the tall. What is happening with the spaces between? Foster shows no desire to disrupt the pseudo-Victorian flourishes of heraldry; rather it is vice versa - but it is disruption that is needed for the city to thrive, with a commitment that is prepared to challenge orthodoxy: there is no soft option here that allows the tower competition to continue along with more and more airports that cater for the ever-growing sameness of our world: aeroplanes, cars, and towers. Scientists keep emphasising how important diversity is; we need to listen and to act rather than pontificate.
Tradition is embraced by embodying the new Millennium Bridge as bits and pieces - 'deconstructed' for the right image.
It is interesting to note that sculptor Anthony Caro was involved in the design of the supports for the Millennium Bridge.
SEE:https://www.domusweb.it/en/speciali/guest-editor/norman-foster/2024/02/02/norman-
foster-the-future-of-urbanization.html
https://www.cnn.com/style/norman-foster-qatar-lusail-towers-spc-intl/index.html
https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/foster-partners-behind-plans-for-2km-tall-
saudi-tower
ARTICLES
Norman Foster
Launches a New Master’s Program in Madrid
By Andrew Ayers
January 30, 2024
“Cities really are
our future,” declared British architect Norman Foster last week
during the kick-off event for his new educational institute in
Madrid. “By 2050, 90 percent of the global population will be
living in cities, which generate 90 percent of the world’s wealth
but also 70 percent of its emissions,” he continued. “To put
things into perspective, this will require the creation of something
like 17 Madrids every year.” In response to the challenge, the
newly created Norman Foster Institute on Sustainable Cities, in
partnership with one of Spain’s most prestigious public
universities, the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), has launched
a master’s program that aims to train future decision-makers in how
sustainable urban development might be achieved. Selected from 1,400
applicants, the 30 students in the program’s inaugural cycle are
mostly in their late 20s and early 30s, hail from 23 countries across
five continents, and come from a variety of professional
backgrounds—60 percent from the world of architecture, the
remainder from disciplines such as engineering, economics,
psychology, politics, and design.
Based in the Spanish
capital, the students will use both UAM premises and a new
“laboratory” space specially acquired and fitted out by the
Norman Foster Foundation (which was established in 2017 in Madrid,
where Foster’s wife, Elena Ochoa, was a professor for many years).
The master’s program, Foster told RECORD, “is a logical
development that has grown out of the workshops, public debates,
forums, thinktanks, and summits organized by the foundation, which
engages with something like 140 institutions around the world.”
Through those connections, the foundation has put together an
international faculty that includes Pritzker Prize–winning
architects Alejandro Aravena, Shigeru Ban, Francis Kéré, and Anne
Lacaton, along with academics like Beatriz Colomina (Princeton), Kent
Larson and Dava Newman (both of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology), and Edgar Pieterse (University of Cape Town, South
Africa). Also on-board are figures like Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the mayor
of Freetown in Sierra Leone, Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias, and
former Spanish justice minister José María Michavila.
Though Foster
admitted in his opening remarks that the urbanization rollercoaster
will happen elsewhere than in Europe, the three pilot cities for the
program’s initial run are Athens, Bilbao, and San Marino. If the
latter seems a surprising choice, it no doubt offers lessons with
respect to governance—the tiny hillside town of 35,000 is one of
the world’s oldest continually functioning republics and few
surviving city-states—and mass tourism, since it receives 2 million
visitors every year. Selection of the initial trio of cities,
representatives of the institute told RECORD, was based on existing
relationships and on geographical practicalities for a program that
is starting modestly with the ambition to grow in the future. “The
methods we will be adopting are applicable to cities globally,
whether they’re Asian, Middle Eastern, or Latin American,” said
Foster. “The philosophy, be it formal or informal, is in that sense
universal.” From what journalists were shown, those methods will
rely heavily on digital interfaces developed by the foundation: based
on open-source data sets, they are designed to allow cities to be
compared in terms of criteria such as walkability, provision of green
open space, social vibrancy, compactness, and so on.
Speaking at the
opening event, faculty members gave a taste of what students might
expect. For Foster, who warned against too top-down an approach, “the
ideal city we would advocate is dense, compact, walkable, and
user-friendly. The opposite of the sprawling car-borne city, it’s
likely to have neighborhoods that are mixed in use and permit the
spontaneity and unpredictability of city life.”
After Larson wowed
event attendees with some of the perhaps surprising conclusions drawn
from research carried out at MIT—the greatest reduction in
emissions would come from the elimination of commuting, while a
meatless diet would have more impact than electric cars—Newman, a
former deputy administrator at NASA, dreamed of putting data farms in
space and declared that “Mars is not option B. Sorry Elon!”
Pieterse highlighted the “cascading governance failures linked to
the colonial legacy” in an African continent whose current urban
population—600 million—is set to triple, while Aravena pointed
out how the failure to address poverty in South America had created
the conditions for the emergence of a “parallel state run by
narcos.” The joker in the speaker pack—at
least that’s how it seemed to many present—was controversial New
York Times columnist Bret Stephens, listed as a faculty member, who
bookended a talk about the crises facing informed journalism with a
cringe-making explanation of why, in his opinion, Foster’s Hearst
Tower is better than Renzo Piano’s New York Times Building (one
supposedly allows you to see the city, the other apparently does
not).
After the event, in
an interview with RECORD, Foster explained how the institute had
already been approached by “a government entity” to explore the
possibility of providing shorter courses about issues of urban
sustainability to those in its employ. Asked about the architecture
profession’s current lack of lobbying power, he replied that “all
human environments are designed. Somebody has to design them—they
can do it well, mediocrely, or badly. I think there are things that
the architectural profession can do [with respect to steering
responses to environmental challenges], but for whatever reason is
not doing. Some of that is being addressed by the foundation, and to
that extent I think it fills an important gap.”
architecturalrecord.com
The Norman Foster
Foundation in Madrid Is an Architecture Lover’s Dream
The starchitect’s
HQ is a tour de force of forward-thinking design—and AD is on hand
to witness its
impressive impact
By Joseph Giovannini
June 14, 2017
It’s been well
over 50 years since Norman Foster hopped into a VW with two fellow
Yale architecture students and drove cross-country to Los Angeles to
see Case Study Houses that were assembled from off-the-shelf steel
parts by L.A.’s avant-garde, including Charles and Ray Eames. That
simple idea about architectural componentry and systems design would
become the basis for Foster + Partners, perhaps the first and
foremost of the world’s global high-tech practices. The drawings
and models of airports, museums, skyscrapers, and even parliaments
that Lord Foster designed are archived and exhibited in a newly
restored 1912 mansion in the diplomatic quarter of Madrid. The Norman
Foster Foundation opened to the public this month.
Norman Foster is now
82, and he’s done something about it. With the precision of a field
marshal operating on several fronts, the London-based architect
opened his foundation in an hôtel particulier in Madrid and
officiated over a fast-paced, thought- provoking symposium, “Future
is Now.” He closed the two-day event with an elaborate banquet for
200 international guests in a wing of the Prado, complete with
harlequined jugglers, flame-swallowers, and singers and dancers
performing traditional Spanish songs and dances. The Mayor of Madrid,
Manuela Carmena, greeted the symposium’s 1,800 attendees, welcoming
Foster as an honorary madrileño.
After the fabled
Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum of old and modern masters, Foster’s
foundation marks the second time in recent history that a foreigner
has brought a ranking cultural institution to the Spanish capital. At
the banquet, the architect said that without his Spanish wife, Elena,
the foundation would not exist.
The day-long Friday
symposium in the Royal Theater, across a plaza from the Royal Palace,
took architecture as the point of departure into the impending global
future of massive urban population influx, which is already leading
to pressing questions about the environment, infrastructure, public
health, and the stewardship of the earth. Instead of creating a
vanity project, Foster has dedicated his foundation as a working
center for research and discussion to help provide answers through
interdisciplinary collaboration between architects, planners,
environmentalists, and artists, who all spoke at the symposium.
Speakers included New York’s former mayor Michael Bloomberg,
Apple’s Jonathan Ive,
digital guru Nicholas Negroponte, and artists Maya Lin and Olafur
Eliasson. Christiane Amanpour moderated one of the three discussions.
Besides being a
research and education center, the foundation serves as a museum
exhibiting models and drawings from all phases of Foster’s prolific
career. The extensive archives and model collection, displayed in
galleries on three floors of the ornate turn-of-the-last-century
stone structure, includes even juvenilia. His personal sketchbooks
start when he was 13, when he voraciously drew, as he says, “anything
that moves”: locomotives, cars, airplanes. The Pavilion, a
futuristic structure adjoining the Foundation enclosed with massive
planes of glass, holds the many talismanic objects that have inspired
him, displayed on open glass shelves—models of cars, furniture, and
buildings by other architects. The one full-size object is the 1925
Avions Voisin two-door car that once belonged to Le Corbusier, who
preached that architecture was a machine for living in. Foster
bought, restored, and now drives the car, whose engine was fabricated
by a company that made airplane motors. Foster himself is also an
accomplished pilot who owns and flies his own jet. He expresses his
aeronautical sensibility in his buildings with designs that are
“yar,” like spirited, tautly equipped yachts.
architecturaldigest.com
*
Norman Robert
Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank,OM, RA, HonFREng (born 1 June
1935) is an English architect and designer. Closely associated with
the development of high-tech architecture, Foster is recognised as a
key figure in British modernist architecture. His architectural
practice Foster+Partners, first founded in 1967 as Foster Associates,
is the largest in the United Kingdom, and maintains offices
internationally. He is the president of the Norman Foster Foundation,
created to 'promote interdisciplinary thinking and research to help
new generations of architects, designers and urbanists to anticipate
the future'. The foundation, which opened in June 2017, is based in
Madrid and operates globally. Foster was awarded the Pritzker Prize
in 1999.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Foster,_Baron_Foster_of_Thames_Bank
+
The term
‘placemaking’ has become something of a cliché that has come to
be questioned. While there is some sense that can be gleaned from
Aldo van Eyck’s statement, ‘place not space,’ the idea of
‘placemaking’ carries less of a vague certainty. One has to
understand that modernism grasped the idea that architectural
experience and meaning were rooted, not in style or form, but in the
space, in the voids that forms created. Siegfried Gidieon promoted
this idea and tried to make it scientific by relating it to the
space/time interests of the physicists of the time – Sigfried
Giedion Space, Time and Architecture, Harvard University
Press, 1941. Bruno Zevi touched on the idea more directly by defining
architecture as space – Bruno Zevi, Architecture As Space,
Horizon Press, 1957, (first published in Italian in 1948). Aldo van
Eyck was pointing out that there was more intimacy and personal
involvement in the experience that was not an intellectual
understanding of an abstraction that was named and located in
‘space.’ It is the understanding of this ‘more’ that remains
vague because of its subtle references that involve the body and mind
interacting with space and form. Perception, memory, symbolism, and
numerous other matters are included in this ‘more’ that
challenges the rational idea of ‘placemaking’ that has become a
common statement of ambitions today; a phrase that echos with an
attractive, hollow certainty that relies on the idea of the
experience of ‘place’ that is closer to a community
understanding. Place can be and is sensed everyday, both as an
enriching experience, and as a challenge to sensibilities. The use of
the term ‘placemakers’ today can be seen everywhere, used
willy-nilly as a ‘meaningful’ term that seeks to grasp the
positive notions involved: e.g. in
https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline
- ‘THE LINE Meet the Placemakers.’
AIRPORTS
for walkable, user-friendly cities?
FLYING CARS & DRONES
What role do flying cars and drones have in Foster's city vision?
Already we have the ‘sci-fi’ images defining expectations for futures that
are difficult to change: consider the ‘Dick Tracy’ watch/phone
and all the other comic strip gadgets like flying cars that the world seeks to make
real in the everyday, as if this might be 'progress.' Can Norman Foster, who has expressed such enthusiasm
for tech gadgets, really dismiss this trend in his ‘walking, people-friendly’
city? Might the 'spaces between' gain a new use?
Foster's towers and airports seem to fit in well with these 'fictional' visions of the future, which Foster says is 'now.' What hope is there? Are we likely to continue to have 'barren' cities shaped by Baron Foster of Thames Bank OM, RA, HonFREng, Architect no matter what he says his ambitions are?
The only constant might be change, (except, ironically, for heraldry
itself); but it is the quality of the outcomes and the commitment to
the intentions and their integrity that remain critical if we are to
achieve “the ideal city . . . dense, compact, walkable, and
user-friendly. The opposite of the sprawling car-borne city, . . .
[with] neighborhoods that are mixed in use and permit the spontaneity
and unpredictability of city life.”
It might sound grand, but what does this
city look like?
?????