Norman Foster: Striving for Simplicity | Louisiana Channel

I've been tremendously fortunate um in all kinds of ways architecturally my family um but I'm always really looking forward so I find it difficult to kind of stop pause and take stock um other than to um realize that uh I've been given many opportunities [Music] [Music] I think as a child I'd always been interested in buildings and I'd always been interested in things locomotives I would stand for hours waiting for a locomotive to pass and there was special locomotives with name plates and they were just Goods trains and you you waited patiently for the really

special ones and cars have always had a an attraction and uh and artists when I was a a child in Manchester I was aware of of lowry for example um uh so uh whether it's weekly magazines like eagle with cutle way drawings which reveal the inner workings of the uh all all all the things that that move and uh and have a dynamic so uh perhaps all the things that excited the Italian futurists at the beginning of the uh of the century and which in many ways have also inspired other Architects L obier for example

had a romance with with buying machines and devoted a book to it and it was one of his books that I discovered in my local lending library that um towards a new architecture but it was the jux deposition of classical architecture with fast hydroplanes and and so on so um so as a child uh I was I mean I remember sketching and I remember being enthused and excited by these machines uh and uh and speed you had an early love for books I read as well what did you find in books which you did not

find in the world around you um the books were really of another more glamorous world I've mentioned towards a new architecture but it could be in the nature of materials Henry Russell Hitchcock or later it could be um 195 copies of the Architectural Review showing the Landscapes of bam marks uh in South America Naya um and um and works in Scandinavia at the time so um so running through this even though my workplace was far removed from the world of architecture in Manchester Town Hall because I left school at 16 um uh and then I

did national service for two years so really running as a thread through all of these different things was my own private world of sketching dreaming enthusing being excited by all the things outside my workplace so if you can imagine that discovering the possibility of being an architect studying to be an architect discovering a School of Architecture an architect studio um that was no longer work work was something that um you went to to earn money to pay into the family um so um so in that sense to be able to discover that the things that

excited me um that one could do those I mean I would pay to do it and I did literally pay to do it last question on childhood because in some biographies we all I played a lot of football did a lot of sports in my childhood with you I don't know but I got the feel that you always kind of were searching looking into different worlds already was it because those worlds were so interesting or were you escaping being the ex world around you um I never thought of it at the time of escaping the

world around me I mean the world around me was a kind of um industrial suburb of Manchester and um and so if I would go off on my bicycle um into the countryside to discover the countryside and um and traditional buildings interestingly although I probably wouldn't have been articulate on that at the time so there's a degree of perhaps post- rationalization there but I was in all kinds of ways an outsider I mean I never got into team sports and and so the whole Sports thing which fascinates me I mean I love CrossCountry skiing and

for the last I don't know 20 odd years I've been doing annually a CrossCountry ski marathon with 11 or 12,000 other people and I do a kind of marathon bike ride with a group of of friends and that's incredibly social um but apart from that most of my cycling is a is a kind of solitary thing um and I find that also quite therapeutic I mean it's a Zen likee thing the relationship ship between myself the machine whether it's the skis whether it's the cycle and I also use that time to be to be thinking

to be cross-examining so um in one sense it's a release um in another sense it's a change of place but it's also a kind of inner Discovery when I I I I really find time because a lot of my time is with teams with groups going to building sites um and engaging with really interesting people who um who have the need of a building and I find that that dialogue um absolutely Central to to the design process [Music] I started flying with sail planes high performance sail planes which is solar flight I mean you fly

vast distances at high speeds um with no with no engine I mean pure solar driven by nature and um and I've gone on to Pilot many different kinds of craft flying machines helicopters micrites fast Jets um about 75 different types for me there are very I I wouldn't say it's seamless but there are very very close links between art painting sculpture architecture design aircraft automobiles locomotives it's that's a seamless World um uh perhaps over time I've become much more um uh I've realized the important links between individual buildings and infrastructure the infrastructure of public spaces

of connections of Transportation Bridges uh terminals uh the the kind of all the the sort of urban glute that binds together the individual buildings that's not to say I'm still not passionate about architecture obviously I'm I'm totally driven by it um but the bigger picture uh is arguably even more more important the master plan the concept um I mean your journey here from Denmark will be your memory will be the route the journeys the path that you took from your home the way back the street um uh the connections the terminal the airports uh that

will be and and that determines the quality of life in the same way that the individual building determines that or it's a huge influence in the I I get your point um but in this let's say complexity of infrastructure of traveling still meeting your buildings you meet a kind of Simplicity and I mean that in the positive sense of the world um and simplicity strikes me when we're flying for example this kind of weightlessness it's very complicated flying but at the same time it's very simple yes it's it um it is that essence of light

lightness and that I think in spirit touches a lot of the the buildings I think probably the best buildings that we've done are those which have those qualities but when I was talking about infrastructure I suppose I was saying that that as a designer um I feel that that we've gone beyond architecture and the interest in infrastructure has influenced the architecture of the individual buildings so if I took you around each of these models I talk about the public space on top of the r stack they never asked for public space it was never part

of the concept their their brief um there was a model of the viaduct where you see seem to fly through the sky you're literally in the clouds and if we look at the individual Towers here you'll find that the public domain the public space penetrates those buildings there's an interaction um so that interest in the city and infrastructure manifests itself in designs which go beyond architecture and which influence when it is pure architecture influences the architecture [Music] it probably has a dominant theme it probably has a dominant story but the building will embody several different

stories there'll be the story perhaps of How It's Made there'll be the story of how it might reinterpret um a um how can I say if you if if you think about a a tower or you think about a conventional airport it may re-examine that building type and come up with something which is different but different not just for the sake of being different but different for a good reason so if you take a tower conventionally has a central core um when we question that on the building immediately behind me the Hong Kong bank there

were very good reasons for rejecting that model even though if you analyze pretty well every tower on the planet it would have a central core so we broke with that tradition we reinvented the tower by fragmenting the core putting it on the end again you can see it so you have free space so you can see from one side to the other it's not blocked and it's flexible so you could put even a dealer's room which would be Unthinkable in a tower and that's exactly what they did many years later or you could consider an

airport um like stanstead which again questioned the conventional idea of a terminal which was that it was a sandwich of space and the roof had a lot of ducks with their handling plant on the top which cooled the air lots of of electric lighting then because you've got no natural light so you've got the heat load of the lighting very energy consuming and not very nice I mean claustrophobic which is why airports had such a bad name when we reconsidered that and put all the air handling at the bottom underneath so that you could open

the top to natural light and sunlight so for most of the time you didn't need electric light you suddenly had something that was joyful that would uplift the spirits and suddenly becomes popular with the most important people who are the paying customers um it's also energy efficient now I can if I describe that I'm describing several different stories I'm telling you one about energy consumption I'm telling you one about Joy I'm telling you one about how you build a building and I'm telling you another about how you question and challenge looking at your buildings you

find some elements that come again and again like you have talked about light already a certain lightness as well uh transparency sometimes that's almost spiritual I mean I think that the task of the reichstag was in a way lifting the burden of history and um and Christo and Jean claude's rapping was symbolically very important in that process um so it was philosophically confronting history keeping the graffiti the Civic vandalism the marks of the Mason um the attacks by bullets and shells but somehow transforming that lightening it um and and involving the public uh and the

politicians are answerable to the public so in a way creating the the public space at the top and the ability to have a coffee a Terrace a meal um but at the time I mean that now is hugely popular I mean the cues just go on forever everybody wants to go there but at the time it was very content I mean politicians were saying as a group why would anybody want to go onto the roof and if they got there why would they want to stay and have a coffee and then of course it's not

big enough because so many people want to go there so that turns into another question why didn't you make it bigger so [Music] am I wrong thinking that with every project that you do despite of the complexity of it you want to end up with a Simplicity that contains the complexity I think it's a search for um it's a search for legibility um it's a search for a simple analog experience in a digital world so uh building tipe like an airport is unbelievably complex in terms of what happens behind the scenes there are so many

different interests the movement of baggage security all the things that you don't see uh so how do you somehow through a complex process distill it down it's a bit like somebody saying um I can write you an essay I can write you a long letter but to to write a poem that's that's a tough one um so how do you distill all that complexity down so that for the people who really matter you make it as great an experience as you can and in some ways these buildings at an epic scale Beijing the largest in

the world at the moment um how do you it's actually a compact building when you think about it and if you take the Apple headquarters which is a very large circular building with a great green heart set in a huge uh Park everybody's reaction quite reasonably is I mean it's a huge building but what you're not seeing is what would normally happen for a campus a campus would be could be up to 30 buildings and then all the movement between that a little bit like Beijing airport Beijing airport in other cities where the airports have

grown up over time are a whole series of separate buildings and then the movement between those buildings and the baggage between those buildings uh it's not much fun um so if you if it's Apple what do you prefer to walk between on asphalt through cars from one building on one side of the site to the other or to be able to jog cycle walk in a great Park and have proximity to your colleagues because you're trying to create a a family entity orbe it a very very large uh building for a very large family um

would you rather move Under One Roof like an artificial sky or would you rather go from one terminal through a maze of roads Jungle of cars lorries trucks I mean it's uh so and obviously it's human nature we're all interested in the tallest the longest the biggest but for every one of those um I mean next week for example we're doing the ground breaking for a small building in Manchester and that's a Maggie cancer center and it's really a big house and and there learning a lot from my time long past but which I continue

to revisit learning a lot from Scandinavia um uh in terms of something which is of this time modern but warmth and domestic and at one with the Landscaping I mean a great tradition um and I remember as a student seeing work of Architects who were not name Architects outside of Denmark like Kai fisa um and um and I think if you see that building you'll understand what I'm saying it's translated in a way which is different yes I mean people have said well it looks like an aircraft Wing the timber structure um or it looks

um as if you're influenced by proving well of course I am but it is an an essay in homeliness because if you've been diagnosed with cancer um you want a reassuring environment if somebody is going to be counseling you um and um and flowers are are important if you go to a hospital always find fresh flowers you bring flowers to a patient um so that's an integral part of the building the greenhouse so that the hour are produced within the same structure um the same structure grows through but there's more glass around a part of

it so it it creates a little hot house for but that's another story you see you once said um that architecture is about values as well what does this mean I think the um architecture um is about in Integrity it's about human values it's about a respect for those and may be difficult to articulate but when um when a building resonates in a certain way it may have an Integrity of structure it may have an Integrity of form um I think the hospital is a very good example I mean again it is like an airport

hugely complex and that can produce a very complex building so you it then is taken for granted that the hospital experience is a complex and perhaps inevitably frightening experience in the way that the airport used to be a frightening experience but it doesn't need to be that I'm absolutely sure of and I say that as a past patient having spent time in hospitals um I'm very grateful that I've emerged um to continue life um beyond that experience I think really in every aspect of life in every Walk of Life you need the balance between a

certain degree of respect and humility um and to do what you do for me to do what I do as an architect a degree of of self-confidence um because you are leading a team uh you're expected to um and that's why I said earlier that I think one aspect of the architect's task is to be a good listener and um and and to hear the many voices that um the needs that that building will will answer and um and also to respect the process of making um the nobility of making that's not fashionable um but

and and in that sense quality is an attitude of mind it's not how much money you spend on a building you've got you've got really three resour ources you've got money you've got time and you've got Creative Energy um and it's the Creative Energy it's the attitude of how you use those resources as wisely as possible and some of the great buildings in the world have been achieved when in the face of economic hardship some of the best buildings in the world are kind of overnight Miracles they've been created very quickly some of the worst

buildings in the world have had had money thrown at them and they're awful [Music] you're turning 80 in some weeks um and you're very Lively you have been through a period where you have been sick but we all know that there will probably not be 80 years left in your life so what remains Mr Foster I I continue to do what I do um uh I'm fired I'm passionate about designing um I know that for the privilege of Designing you also pay the price for having to do quite a lot of other things which don't

necessarily come so naturally and don't give you the same degree of pleasure but they kind of come with the uh with the tasks um I suppose that if if if there was the opportunity to um I think that um Buckminster Fuller's analogy of the trim tab the little tab on the big control surface which um equalizes the forces and enables the bigger uh elements to move because of the small kind of catalyst effect um uh then uh it would be great if um if we could address some of those bigger issues um designed as a

tool to uh address shelter in the big picture I mentioned the the project for daravi and there the proposition was that you might be able to recycle to add the basic Services which don't exist like sanitation power water but you could respect the urban structure which had grown up in those settlements because they're quite of of course they have their darker side but you have to remember that people have come they've congregated in these areas because they offer Greater Hope greater Prosperity from so so the challenge of how you transform settlements like that which relate

to a huge percentage of the world's population um and I believe that there are alternatives more human Alternatives more subtle alternatives to getting the big bulldozers you know raising it to the ground and then transporting those communities into uh into other modern buildings so I think that the answer to your short question question which was a rather long answer would be that know we've built airports we're still excited by those challenges we built Towers we're excited by by that we're doing a lot of small community buildings we're excited by that um but the bigger issues

are not really addressed by by Architects and that's we're talking about billions of people and those are the people who need power they need clean water and how do you achieve that so those to be able in some small way to make a contribution in that direction that I think would be very satisfying and that density is quite an important factor isn't it well the city is about density so it's and it's about concentration and um and there are certain lessons again from history Georgia and London with Rouses walk up uh for five stories maximum

around uh Gardens which were semi-public um so public spaces like Parks um dense communities highrise as appropriate but not lost in a sea of uh neglected space um but part of a weapon in a wider Armory if you like um but that's coming back to the bigger picture and that's where our conversation really started which was the importance of infrastructure do you think technology in the end is an ally or threat to our society technology can never be a threat I mean uh technology is a means so the history of architecture the history of humanity

coming out of the cave into a in is a story of Technology of innovation the high-tech buildings of the past the cathedrals they're miracles of Technology well of course any technology you can turn from violent aggressive you can turn into something which is violent and aggressive um but that's probably true of anything you can use medicine to cure you can use medicine to poison um uh you can as baky put it you can convert the killing machine into the living machine and um and that was some of the Endeavors after after the water to harness

um but that's also true of of of space travel and space exploration um so uh so it's really it's how you use the technology but you can't you can't move forward you can't answer the needs we can't be protected in here when it's raining or snowing or cool in here when we open the windows and it's baking hot outside that's a technological response and the technology is changing all the time so the challenge is to turn it to our advantage looking out of the window I see sculptures I see art it's an integral part of

of Our Lives as a family as individuals um it's completely woven in in the same way that that those Inspirations influences subconscious perhaps subliminal but they're there we're all a victim of uh of influences or victim is the wrong word were we're all products if you like of influences and what could can you verbalize what art does to you in your practice as architect in your life why is it important I think it's an other way of looking at forms of life I think that it opens you to see new possibilities to make connections it

makes you uh it heightens your sense of of awareness uh it's another dimension and and and again there are certain artifacts there are certain cars you can see the curve of a back and there's a sort of sensuous quality to that um that for me is is Art I was looking at an exhibition of locomotives um each one must have been lovingly created and everything works it's a miniaturized series of I mean just I mean labors of love and for me those are pure art the sail plane is as beautiful as the branzi the bruzi

and the bioni the figure flowing in space those are inseparable from the best cars of the period the krysler airflow is inseparable from the krysler building of Van Allen um the Streamline forms of the Burlington zephra and the m1000 uh in the 30s which heralded a new high performance again lighter form of locomotion um those are inseparable from the these incredible works by artists um around 1913 so they're kind of magic years but there's all of these things they're Timeless they go beyond the style of a certain time their their classics [Music] my last question

my son is 7 years old and he's quite interested in architecture and books and I imagine him a little bit like you as a young boy he kind of looks at books and he's totally away so if he decided to study architecture and he in his study would fall about a book and you as an architect nor Foster what would you like a boy like him to remember you as an architect in 20 30 40 years time I'd like to feel that from um conversations like this um or perhaps film books buildings um that um

that he becomes aware that by questioning and by challenging and by having a degree of determination and conviction and enthusiasm and passion um that you really can make a difference to the world and the everyday world that we all live in um and that that can make a difference and that he could in turn along with his colleagues make a difference in the future but if you would be looking at a book by you like you looked at the books of leier what do do you think will Fascinate him about you and your architecture I

think it it it might be the way that we [Music] have rethought redesigned reinvented um the otherwise conventional what was considered to be a traditional way of doing something and that we done that by going back to Roots Going Back to Basics and questioning from first principles so what would be fantastic for your son is that if he was able to do that and be able to tear up what we'd done and do something which we discovered another better way of doing it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]