Norman foster

SIR NORMAN FOSTER

“the best architecture comes from a synthesis of all the elements that separately comprise a building…” -Foster

• Born in 1935 in Manchester, England• He attended Grammar School In Burnage.• Entered Manchester School of Architecture when 21 years old• Received Master’s Degree at Yale University• Norman, Wendy, Sue Rogers and Richard Rogers form firm ‘Team 4’ in

1963• Foster’s Associates (now known as Foster and Partners) created in

1967 30st Mary Axe , London• Receives AIA Gold Medal (1994)• Wins the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1999)• Currently has offices across the world in London, Berlin and Singapore

with over 500 employees

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY “Technology is part of civilization and being anti-technology would be like declaring war on architecture and civilization itself. If I can get carried away with some passion about the poetry of the light in one of my projects, then I can also, in the same vein, enjoy the poetry of the hydraulic engineering.” -Foster

Hearst Tower , New York St. Mary Axe, London

DESIGN INSPIRATION?

London City Hall (GLA)El Potato de Rojo

Willis Building (Ipswich) General information Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters, Ipswich Style High Tech • The Willis building in Ipswich, England (originally the Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters ) is one of the earliest buildings designed by Norman Foster after establishing Foster Associates. • Constructed between 1970 and 1975 for the insurance firm now known as

Willis Group Holdings, it is now seen as a landmark in the development of the 'high tech' architectural style.

• The building houses some 1,300 office staff in open plan offices spread over three floors• The center of the building is constructed from a grid of concrete pillars, 14 m (46 ft) apart,

supporting cantilevered concrete slab floors. • The exterior is clad in a dark smoked glass curtain wall.

• The use of dark glass, a curtain wall and lack of right angle corners mirrors the art deco Express Building in Manchester - one of Norman Foster's favorite buildings.

• The central escalator well leads up to a rooftop staff restaurant surrounded by a rooftop garden (360 panorama).

• Originally there was also a swimming pool for employees to enjoy during their lunch break. This has now been covered up (not filled in due to it being a listed building) and the space is used for more offices. The swimming pool can be seen underneath the false floor.

30 St Mary Axe General information

Height

Technical details

Type Office

Location St. Mary AxeLondon, United Kingdom

Roof 180 meters (591 ft)

Floor count 41

Floor area 47,950 square meters (516,100 sq ft)

Coordinates 51 30 52  00 04 49 / ° ′ ″N ° ′ ″W51.51444°N 0.08028°W

• The building has become an iconic symbol of London and is one of the city's most widely recognized examples of modern architecture.

• The building uses energy-saving methods which allow it to use half the power a similar tower would typically consume.

• Gaps in each floor create six shafts that serve as a natural ventilation system for the entire building even though required firebreaks on every sixth floor interrupt the "chimney.“

• The shafts create a giant double glazing effect; air is sandwiched between two layers of glazing and insulates the office space inside.

• Architects promote double glazing in residential houses to avoid the inefficient convection of heat, but the tower exploits this effect.

• The shafts pull warm air out of the building during the summer and warm the building in the winter using passive solar heating. The shafts also allow sunlight to pass through the building, making the work environment more pleasing, and keeping the lighting costs down.

• The primary methods for controlling wind-excited sways are to increase the stiffness, or increase damping with tuned/active mass dampers. To a design by Arup, its fully triangulated perimeter structure makes the building sufficiently stiff without any extra reinforcements.

• Despite its overall curved glass shape, there is only one piece of curved glass on the building—the lens-shaped cap at the very top.

• On the building's top level (the 40th floor), there is a bar for tenants and their guests featuring a 360° view of London.

• A restaurant operates on the 39th floor, and private dining rooms on the 38th.

• Whereas most buildings have extensive lift equipment on the roof of the building, this was not possible for the Gherkin, since a bar had been planned for the 40th floor. The architects dealt with this by having the main lift only reach the 34th floor, and then having a push-from-below lift to the 39th floor.

• There is a marble stairwell and a disabled persons' lift which leads the visitor up to the bar in the dome.

• The building is visible over long distances: from the north, for instance, it can be seen from the M11 motorway some 32 kilometers (20 mi) away, while to the west it can be seen from the statue of George III in Windsor Great Park.

Hearst Tower (New York City)

• General information

• Height

• Technical details

Type Office

Location 300 West 57 StreetNew York City, U.S.

Roof 182 m (597 ft)

Floor count 46Floor area 80,000 square metres (861,100 sq ft)

Coordinates40 46 00  73 59 00 / ° ′ ″N ° ′ ″W40.766538 °N 73.983452°W

• Hearst Tower is the first "green" high rise office building completed in New York City, with a number of environmental considerations built into the plan.

• The floor of the atrium is paved with heat conductive limestone. • Polyethylene tubing is embedded under the floor and filled with

circulating water for cooling in the summer and heating in the winter.• Rain collected on the roof is stored in a tank in the basement for use in

the cooling system, to irrigate plants and for the water sculpture in the main lobby.

• 85% of the building's structural steel contains recycled material.• Overall, the building has been designed to use 26% less energy than the

minimum requirements for the city of New York, and earned a gold designation from the United States Green Building Council’s LEED certification program, becoming New York City's first LEED Gold skyscraper.

• The atrium features escalators which run through a 3-story water sculpture titled Icefall, a wide waterfall built with thousands of glass panels, which cools and humidifies the lobby air. The water element is complemented by a 70-foot-tall (21 m) fresco painting titled Riverlines by artist Richard Long.

• According to Curbed, "Designing a cleaning rig that could that clean the Hearst Tower took the engineers at Tractel-Swingstage three years (and around $3 million); the company's vice-president of engineering had never seen anything like what Foster and Partners' called the building's 'bird's mouths.'"

Wembley Stadium• General informationType stadiumLocation London, England

Coordinates51 33 21  0 16 47 / ° ′ ″N ° ′ ″W51.55583°N 0.27972°WCoordinates:

Capacity90,000 (football, rugby league, rugby union)86,000 (American football)75,000 to 90,000 seated and 15,000 standing (concerts)60,000 to 72,000 (athletics)

Field dimensions 105 by 68 meters (115 by 74 yd )

Architect Foster and Partners, HOK Sport, Nathaniel Litchfield and Partners (planning consultants)

Field dimensions 105 by 68 meters (115 by 74 yd )

• It is a UEFA category four stadium. The 90,000-capacity venue (105,000 combined seating and standing) is the second largest stadium in Europe, and serves as England's national stadium.

• The stadium's signature feature is a circular section lattice arch of 7 m (23 ft) internal diameter with a 315 m (1,033 ft) span, erected some 22° off true, and rising to 133 m (436 ft). It supports all the weight of the north roof and 60% of the weight of the retractable roof on the southern side.

• The archway is the world's longest unsupported roof structure.• Instead of the 39 steps climbed, in the original stadium, to enter the Royal

Box and collect a trophy, there are now 107.• A "platform system" has been designed to convert the stadium for

athletics use, but its use would decrease the stadium's capacity to approximately 60,000.

Covering• The stadium roof has an area of 40,000 m2,

of which 13,722 m2 is movable.• The primary reason for the sliding

roof was to avoid shading the pitch, as grass demands direct sunlight to grow effectively.

• The sliding roof design minimizes the shadow by having the roof pulled back on the east, west and south.

• Angus Campbell, chief architect, also said that an aim was for the pitch to be in sunlight during the match between the beginning of May and the end of June, between 3 pm and 5 pm, which is when the FA and World cups would be played. However it was mentioned during live commentary of the FA Cup Final in 2007 that the pitch was in partial shade at the start at 3 pm and also during the match.

• The stadium roof rises to 52 meters above the pitch and is supported by an arch rising 133 meters above the level of the external concourse. With a span of 315 meters, the arch is the longest single span roof structure in the world.