Apart from being wonderfully creative, Sir Norman Foster is one of the most controversial characters in the contemporary architecture scene. His stunning buildings and urban design projects have changed city centres and transformed man-made skylines all over the world.
Foster's buildings have an immediate wow-factor that makes you stand and stare. But behind that breath-taking design there is always a spot-on functionality that was the reason the building was built in the first place.
A Foster building is great to look at, but design is not there at the expense of utility. Foster designs buildings to be used.
Foster's work may be recognisable, but it is impossible to classify. No one can say that Foster is this or that type of architect. His work is never boxed in by style. Foster has the ability to mix the future with the past and come up with something that stretches the limits of contemporary style. An architect is often an invisible man working away at a drawing board and no one knows or wants to know his name. But Foster is different. He is an artist whose medium is construction and he has brought the architect's name out into the open to stand up there and be praised or condemned for the building he has created.
Foster was born in 1935 in Manchester in the north of England. He was less than an average pupil at school and got an office job at the age of 16 with the city council. He then went into the Royal Air Force and then suddenly in his 20s he made up his mind to study architecture at Manchester University.
He had to support himself during his years as a student, but when he graduated, he won a fellowship to continue his studies at Yale University in the United States. There he made friends with Richard Rogers, another English student, and when the two of them returned to London, they set up an architecture company.