Norman Foster: Sustainable Practice — Selected Projects 1990-2020
About this book
Foster + Partners: Architecture and Design for the 21st Century Foster + Partners stands as one of the most influential architectural practices in the world, having shaped the built environment across six decades with a philosophy that seamlessly integrates technological innovation, structural elegance, and environmental responsibility. This comprehensive monograph documents the firm's most significant projects, from iconic civic buildings to pioneering sustainable masterplans, offering an authoritative survey of contemporary high-tech architecture at its most ambitious. At the heart of the practice's methodology is a conviction that great architecture must respond honestly to its context — climatic, cultural, and programmatic — while pushing the boundaries of what is technically possible.
The firm's portfolio ranges from the soaring glass canopy of the Great Court at the British Museum in London to the aerodynamic curves of the Hearst Tower in New York, from the gravity-defying Apple Park in Cupertino to the futuristic Masdar City initiative in Abu Dhabi. Each project is presented with extensive documentation including concept sketches, working drawings, engineering diagrams, and finished photography, allowing readers to follow the design process from initial idea to completed building. The book is organized thematically rather than chronologically, grouping projects by building typology — transportation hubs, cultural institutions, corporate headquarters, residential towers, educational facilities, and urban masterplans — to reveal consistent design principles operating across wildly different scales and contexts.
Transportation infrastructure receives particular attention, with detailed coverage of projects such as Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3, the world's largest airport building at the time of its completion, and the Millau Viaduct in France, a cable-stayed road bridge that for a period held the record as the tallest bridge in the world. These engineering feats are analyzed not merely as technical achievements but as expressions of civic pride and catalysts for regional development. Sustainability runs as a leitmotif throughout every section.
Foster + Partners has long argued that ecological responsibility and architectural ambition are not in tension but are mutually reinforcing. The Swiss Re tower in London, commonly known as the Gherkin, is presented as a landmark case study in this regard: its distinctive tapering cylindrical form reduces wind loads, its double-glazed facade incorporates ventilation shafts that draw fresh air through the building, and its spiral light wells introduce natural light deep into the floor plates. The result is a building that uses approximately half the energy of a comparable conventionally designed office tower.
Similar passive and active environmental strategies are dissected across multiple projects, providing architects, engineers, and students with a rich toolkit of proven techniques. The monograph also examines the firm's research and development culture. Unlike many practices that treat technology as a means to an end, Foster + Partners has consistently invested in prototype testing, computational modeling, and materials research as ends in themselves.
The book documents the practice's in-house specialist modeling studio, which has developed bespoke software tools for parametric facade design, structural optimization, and daylighting simulation. This commitment to innovation extends to the firm's engagement with fabrication technology: projects such as the Bloomberg European Headquarters in London, which won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2018, are shown to have pushed the limits of bronze casting, poured concrete, and integrated building services to achieve seamless, technologically rich interior environments. Urban design and masterplanning form another major strand of the book.
The practice has increasingly taken on large-scale urban commissions that require thinking not just about individual buildings but about the relationships between buildings, streets, public spaces, and infrastructure. The Canary Wharf development in London, Masdar City's zero-carbon ambition, and various mixed-use urban regeneration projects across Europe and Asia are examined as laboratories for testing ideas about density, mobility, green space, and community. The book is candid about the challenges and compromises inherent in large-scale urban work, and senior partners contribute reflective essays that acknowledge the limitations as well as the achievements of each project.
Written in accessible yet rigorous prose, with contributions from leading critics and historians of architecture, the book contextualizes Foster + Partners' work within broader intellectual and cultural currents: the legacy of modernism, the influence of Buckminster Fuller and the British high-tech movement, and the emerging imperatives of climate change and digital fabrication. Whether read as a reference work, a source of design inspiration, or a critical history of contemporary architecture, this volume constitutes an essential document of our built age.