Norman Foster
Star architect, marathon cross-country skier, international jetsetter: Norman Foster has a resume as big as the Beijing airport (which he also designed). The dapper 77-year-old British knight, the brains behind the HSBC building, Chek Lap Kok airport and countless other landmarks around the world, has won the rights to build the (much delayed) West Kowloon Cultural District. Reclining on couches in the Mandarin Oriental’s lobby, Foster chats with Hana R. Alberts about his connection to Hong Kong and what he does when he’s not working.
I can’t claim to be born here, but I truly feel at home. That I can say with total conviction.
I grew up in Manchester. I left school at 16. I worked at the Manchester Town Hall for two years. I did two years military service in the RAF. I [finished] at 20, and I started architecture school at 21.
It was only late in life that I discovered that I could be an architect. That’s not surprising, because in the background I came out of, people didn’t go to university.
I ended up, finally, in America with a Henry Fellowship to do a master’s degree at Yale. Then I discovered it was no big deal working your way through university because a lot of people did it in America.
It’s a paradox, because as a child I didn’t travel, [but] I think I always had a
wider horizon.
In one sense, Hong Kong is always different whenever you come back. I described it to my wife as a perpetual building site. And it changes, changes, changes. And yet, in the most important ways, nothing changes.
Now I know that’s the visitor speaking. But even though this hotel has been ripped apart and changed and so on, it’s still very much the same place.
