Norman Robert Foster, Lord Foster of Thames Bank OM Kt (born June 1, 1935) is a British architect.
Foster was born in Manchester and educated at the University of Manchester and at Yale University. He worked for the visionary Buckminster Fuller before meeting with Richard Rogers, creating Team 4 and in 1967 Foster Associates.
His designs were originally a stylish, machine influenced high-tech but he has moved away from this to a blander, more acceptable sharp-edged modernity.
He has had a extremely successful career including:
- the Sainsbury's Centre for Visual Arts at University of East Anglia in Norwich
- the Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt
- the HSBC Tower and the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong
- the terminal building at Stansted Airport
- the metro of Bilbao, Spain
- Carre d'Art, Nîmes, France (1993)
- the redevelopment of the Great Court of the British Museum (1999)
- the Greater London Authority HQ (2000)
- the Millennium Bridge in London (1999)
- the Reichstag redevelopment in Berlin (1999)
- 30 St Mary Axe (site of Swiss Re headquarters, under construction 2001-2003)
He was knighted in 1990 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1997. In 1999 he was created a life peer.