In Conversation With Norman Foster: “Design Is a Social Agenda”

I'm Norman Foster.

I'm here in our main studio in London,

and I'm answering questions from AD, Architectural Digest.

I'd always been interested in buildings,

but it was really,

I discovered at the age of 20

that it was possible to study architecture.

And although I didn't have the qualifications

for a university.

The university made a special exception for me.

So I did the architectural degree course,

but at the end of it

I got something called a diploma.

So it was a very good arrangement.

We're all of us fired by the

prospect of design and realizing design.

At the same time,

we question, we challenge,

and wherever possible we innovate.

We try to make change for good,

but we're always aware of the historical dimension.

whether that's cities in crisis,

which always bounce back more strongly,

whether that's Lisbon, earthquakes,

the birth of seismic structures.

Whether it's cholera, London, New York,

realizing the Reservoir Central Park,

creating the Thames Embankment,

modern sanitation.

Whether it's the great fire of London

that created the terraces.

In all of these cases,

and I could give you more examples,

the lessons of history is that

cities bounce back stronger.

We were really quite desperate for work.

We were in a, something called a bedsit,

a very small apartment,

that was our office.

I was teaching part-time,

my late wife because Wendy

and I founded the practice,

she was working in an architect's office

and I was teaching part-time.

And one of the students,

his father worked in Docklands

and said, I know that Fred Olson,

the shipping company is talking to builders

about a shower block, a bathroom

on the site,

and I could get you a meeting with the dock manager.

Now that when you think about it is

perhaps the most humble project that you could imagine.

And I went for it.

Design is really the social agenda.

Design is to improve the quality of our lives,

improve it materially, improve it spiritually.

It's about concepts of beauty.

It's about convenience

and technology that is the means

to those social ends,

which is about innovation.

And of course, that's linked to sustainability.

And sustainability is linked to nature

because if you are working with nature,

you are reducing energy.

You are creating healthier buildings.

We have been using AI for some time.

That technology is not new, of course,

it's much more powerful, has greater capability.

We've seen since starting in practice,

everything was hand drawn.

It's now on a screen

and all the themes of sustainability.

At that time, that was a fringe activity.

Now it's absolutely mainstream and normal.

So with time,

the context has changed,

but we have not changed in terms of our philosophy.

The human element, the contact,

if you were commissioning a building

or if you were a user in a building,

you would have needs,

we would have a conversation about that.

If it's a city, it's a community.

And if you are using the power,

the digital power

to be able to show how making a positive change here,

planting more trees here,

changing the traffic pattern,

you don't have to do it

to find out whether it's as effect.

You can actually anticipate that by modeling it.

So all of these tools can engage a community in a bottom-up

approach to making changes to make

the city more healthy.

Go for any project

which presents an opportunity to design.

And nothing can be too humble.

The young individual

or individuals who are starting a practice,

nothing is wasted.

Dare to take risks

and don't be ashamed of failure.

Failure is only

bad if you don't learn from it.

So if you really do it well, nothing is wasted.

So if you enter a competition

and you don't win that competition,

if you've really done justice to it,

you'll learn something

and that will then inform something else.

And with the passage of time,

I guarantee you will look back

on that time when you were really sad and depressed.

My God, you know, we've lost.

But the reality is

that you may not have won the competition,

but you've won something more precious.

They always was one project for

a national German athletic stadium

that would've been built in Frankfurt,

and it was the end of

that analog period.

So everything was done by hand.

And there probably several thousand little kind

of model people in that stadium.

And the engineer who worked with me on that project,

Jack Zunz, sadly no longer with us,

said, Norman, in my career,

if there was one project

that I'd really like to see built, it's that project.

It's a very, very difficult question

because as you say,

it's almost like saying,

choose your favorite child.

I'd probably come at it more obliquely.

I start to say,

well, if I think of one project

that perhaps ticks more boxes than any other,

I think the Reichstag,

in terms of its historical dimension,

the way in which it seeks

to wipe out a past

that was pretty awful in terms of

historic background.

So in a way, it is erased

and it's erased by Jeanne-Claude and Christo

with the wrapping, in a way,

a symbolic new life.

But then that cupola with its cone,

which reflects natural light

and which extracts air,

pulls air through the building,

is part of the ecology,

which makes it virtually a zero carbon building.

So it's a clean energy manifesto.

And this is going back to the 1990s,

but above all it is democracy in

action on the skyline.

And the public are symbolically above the politicians

who are answerable to them.

I probably select the Sainsbury Center

because it was the first public building,

and it's about culture.

It's about bringing together public galleries

with a teaching facility

for students all under one roof.

And it was for Lord and Lady Sainsbury,

who became Bob and Lisa,

and were like the grandparents that I never had.

So there's a very personal dimension to

that building.

And then I'd start

to say the same thing perhaps about the Millennium Bridge

and the way in which it connects the

prosperous North Bank,

the financial heart of London,

with traditionally the poorest South Bank.

So it's a social equalizer,

but it's also about pedestrianization.

It's about a new perspective on the river

and a new kind of suspension bridge.

And that's had a dramatic effect,

not only on south itself,

socially, it's brought more people in.

Its created hotels, jobs,

but it's also increased St. Paul's in terms

of its attraction,

modern in terms

of the number of visitors.

So again, working at many levels.

In Madrid, in 2017,

there was a big event in the Opera House.

2,000 young people.

And one person said, Norman Foster,

what advice would you give to

somebody graduating?

And I, without hesitation,

because it was instinctive,

I said the advice

that I would give myself, stay a student.

And then what do I mean by stay a student?

I mean, dare to challenge,

dare to question,

be curious, be hungry.

But above all, be humble.