描述
This book is one of a series devoted to the work of Norman Foster and his practice Foster Associates. As Martin Pawley writes in his introduction, it is a body of work that has”. . . become part of the language of twentieth-century architecture, for it is a language that cannot be spoken without them.”
Explored here, in Volume 2 of the series, are the buildings and projects carried out by the architect in the 1970s, the period during which he consolidated the talent shown in his earlier domestic work and rose to the threshold of international acclaim. This book, at a level of authentic detail unmatched in other publications devoted to his architecture, tells the full story behind the design and construction of Foster Associates’ first major buildings – the Willis Faber t Dumas insurance offices in Ipswich; the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, and the later Renault Distribution Centre in Swindon.
Although conceived against a background of a decade of economic turmoil and growing hostility to modern design, the story of each of these remarkable buildings can be seen as a positive model for the future development of a humane technological architecture. Like its companion volumes, this book for the first time lays bare the full depth and complexity of Foster Associates’ design process. Included here are many hitherto unpublished sketches, drawings and photographs, each given meaning by a series of authoritative texts drafted in close consultation with the architect, his associates and design team members, and consultants.
The same unique insight is not confined to Foster Associates better known buildings: studies of unrealised projects as diverse as the Frankfurt national athletics stadium, the Open House community centre, and even the abandoned 1976 project for the architect’s own house are also described. The collected Buildings and Pro jects of Norman Foster is a unique and invaluable series of volumes. When completed, it will provide the definitive record of the work of a man who is now regarded as one of the most far sighted architects of his generation.
