Norman Foster

Norman Foster (born 1935) is a British architect, born in Reddish, Stockport. He graduated from the University of Manchester School of Architecture in 1961 and took a master's degree at Yale, where he met Richard Rogers; in 1963 they founded Team 4 with Su Brumwell and Wendy Cheesman. He founded Foster Associates, now Foster + Partners, in 1967. In 1999 he received the Pritzker Prize and became a life peer.

His buildings use steel and glass, factory-made components and exposed structure. The Willis Faber and Dumas headquarters in Ipswich (1975) has a curving facade of dark glass and a grass roof garden. The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich (1978) holds galleries and teaching space in a single long shed. The HSBC Main Building in Hong Kong (1985) hangs its floors from steel trusses on paired masts, leaving a public plaza open at street level. At Stansted Airport (1991) the building services run beneath the concourse floor, so the roof carries only its own weight and rooflights.

Later works include the glass dome over the rebuilt Reichstag in Berlin (1999), with spiral ramps that let the public walk to the top; 30 St Mary Axe in London (2003), a rounded tower known as the Gherkin; the Millau Viaduct in France (2004), designed with the engineer Michel Virlogeux; and Apple Park in Cupertino, California (2017).