Norman Foster: A Life in Architecture

"Deyan Sudjic's discursive biography offers a portrait of a searcher, a man always exploring the limits of architecture, of whom one client pays the ultimate compliment: Foster 'asked the right questions."羅Telegraph

"Deyan Sudjic has delivered meticulously researched and psychologically resonant insights into the conflicting forces of aspiration and outsider status that propelled Foster towards his breakthrough building...Sudjic is particularly good at delineating Foster's astonishing ability to get clients to revise their expectations so that he could develop truly radical architecture."羅The Independent

"It is an extraordinary story of a truly self-made man who seems a kickback to the great Victorians, the engineers and industrialists who made the Manchester he came from and conquered the world with their machines."-Financial Times

"Sudjic explains how Foster helped transform his profession. When he started out, it was largely a gentlemanly, small-scale business, a sort of cottage industry with a strong emphasis on the handicraft of models and drawings. Projects outside the architect's country were the exception. Today, Foster's practice employs well over 1,000 people. The book tells this story clearly and it makes a good introduction to Foster."羅Observer

Norman Foster is a phenomenon羅both as an architect and as an individual. He is one of the world's most prominent and influential architects and is responsible for some of the most recognizable buildings of the past thirty years. Under his driven leadership, what is now called Foster + Partners has grown to become an international firm with almost one thousand architects, building astounding constructions all over the globe. In this insightful and elegantly written biography, Deyan Sudjic charts the remarkable professional life of this master architect.

Norman Foster is responsible for the design of numerous well-known buildings, including Beijing's new airport, one of the world's largest; the Hearst Corporation Building in New York City; the reconstruction of the Reichstag building in Berlin; the Swiss Re tower (colloquially called "the Gherkin") and the Great Court at the British Museum in London; an entire university campus for Petronas in Malaysia; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.; and one of the towers to be built at Ground Zero in Manhattan.

In this essential biography, Sudjic explores Norman Foster's impact on architecture and on the contemporary city. He traces Foster's remarkable journey from the humble backstreets of Manchester, England, showing both the determination with which Foster has built a global architectural firm and his huge creative influence on the world we see around us.