Norman Foster

In 1964, he married architect Wendy Cheesman, who was one of the founding members of ‘Team 4’ and later established ‘Foster Associates’ with him in 1967. She succumbed to cancer in 1989. He has four sons from her.

He married Sabiha Rumani Malik in 1991 but they eventually divorced in 1995.

His present wife Elena Ochoa Foster, whom he married in 1996, is a psychopathologist.

He was born on June 1, 1935, in Reddish, Stockport, Cheshire to Robert Foster and Lilian Smith. The family shifted to Levenshulme, Manchester, soon after he was born.

His father served the ‘Metropolitan-Vickers’, a heavy electrical engineering company, at Trafford Park. It is from this place that his enthusiasm in engineering and designing grew, which, according to him inspired him to take up a career in architecture and design.

He studied in Burnage at the ‘Burnage Grammar School for Boys’.

In 1951, persuaded by his father, he sat for and cleared the ‘Manchester Town Hall's’ trainee scheme entrance examination and started working at the Treasurer’s Department of Manchester City Treasurer's office as an officer.

As his interest always lay in architecture, the idea of pursuing an architectural career fueled up again when he heard that son of one of his colleagues, Mr. Cobb, was studying the subject.

In 1963 he along with Su Brumwell, Wendy Cheesman and Richard Rogers founded an architectural practice called the ‘Team 4’ which soon became reputed for its high-tech architectural designs.

When ‘Team 4’ was dissolved in 1967, Foster and his wife Wendy Cheesman set up ‘Foster Associates’ the same year in London, which was re-christened as ‘Foster + Partners’ in the 1990s.

‘Foster Associates’ began working on huge public structures, industrial buildings, projects on transportation and private houses. In 1968, the company started collaborating with Richard Buckminster Fuller, an American architect that continued till 1983.

Though his company worked on a couple of projects, the real breakthrough project of ‘Foster Associates’ was the ‘Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters’ (1971–1975) in Ipswich, UK. The design of the building was inspired from Manchester’s ‘Daily Express Building’.

His next major project was a public art gallery and museum, the ‘Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts’ (1974–1978) at the ‘University of East Anglia’ in Norwich, UK. In December 2012, it was enlisted as a ‘Grade II building'.

The full height glass façade building of ‘Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters’ in Ipswich, UK that has open plan office floors (an aspect that was still new at that time), roof gardens, gymnasium and swimming pool not only uplifted the design of the site but also increased the quality of life of the employees. It is presently listed as a ‘Grade II building'.

‘Hong Kong International Airport’ (1992–1998) in Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong, world’s largest airport, which was opened on July 6, 1998, remains his major career achievement. The colossal terminal is of eight storeys with a lightweight steel roof of forty-five acres and a glass enclosed space of six million square feet. It is so huge that it can be seen from space.

Foster along with Michel Virlogeux designed ‘Millau Viaduct’, the world’s tallest bridge situated near Millau in Southern France, which was opened on December 16, 2004.