| Biographical note |
Norman Foster is a distinguished architect and designer, principal of Foster and Partners, an international architecture, design, and development firm based in London. Lord Foster was educated at Manchester University and Yale University, and has been the recipient of numerous major architectural awards including the Pritzker Prize (1999), the AIA Gold Medal (1994) and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal (1983).
Lord Foster met Buckminster Fuller in 1971, and over the course of the next twelve years the two collaborated on numerous projects and exchanged ideas regarding shelter, energy, and the envoronment. The collaborations with Bucky would later find their way into Fosters architectural designs; their collaboration on the _climatroffice project in the early 1970s informed and inflenced the design of the Swiss Re building in London (1997-2004), which uses natural ventilation to create reduce the need for mechanical cooling and ventilation.
In his 1999 acceptance speech for the Pritzker Prize, Lord Foster said of R. Buckminster Fuller, he was "the essence of a moral conscience....He remains a guiding spirit..."
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