Sir Norman Foster
Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate
1999 

Los Angeles, CA—Sir Norman Foster, a 63 year old architect from Great Britain, has been named the 1999 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Among the many Foster and Partners on-going projects throughout the world, some of the highest profile are the world's largest airport in Hong Kong, which opened this past year; the new Great Court for the British Museum; and the creation within Berlin's historic Reichstag of a new German Parliament. 

Other major projects in various phases of design or construction include a headquarters tower for Daewoo Electronics in Seoul, Korea; a museum of prehistory in the Gorges du Verdon, France; a new regional Music Center, planned for a dramatic riverside site in Gateshead, north-east England; a great glass house for the new National Botanic Gardens of Wales; a service station concept for the petroleum company Repsol in Spain and Latin America; and a new university campus in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 

In London, the practice has many projects either newly-completed or under develpment. These include a Bio-Medical Sciences Building for Imperial College; headquarters towers for Citibank and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank at Canary Wharf; the Millennium Pedestrian Bridge across the River Thames forming a new route between St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Gallery of Modern Art and the Globe Theatre on Bankside; the World Squares For All Central London master plan, yet another facet of the firm's work in urban planning with the goal to reclaim Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square for pedestrians while respecting the demands of traffic; a new Wembley Stadium; and a parliament building for the Greater London Authority on the banks of the Thames adjacent to Tower Bridge. 

In the United States, Foster completed a new wing for the Joslyn Museum in Omaha, Nebraska in 1994. Nearing completion in Palo Alto, California is a 214,000 square-foot Center for Clinical Sciences Research at Stanford University's Medical School. 

As the Pritzker Architecture Prize begins its third decade of honoring great architecture throughout the world, Thomas J. Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation, spoke of the jury's choice, saying, "The jury has chosen an architect who cares passionately about the future of this planet, an avowed optimist with a firm belief in technological progress, but who also believes that architecture is about people and the quality of life. He makes buildings that will not only last, but will work for the people that use them, and in the process provide an uplifting experience." 

The formal presentation of what has come to be known throughout the world as architecture's highest honor will be made at a ceremony in Berlin on June 7, 1999. At that time, Sir Norman will be presented with a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion. He is the second Englishman to become a Pritzker Laureate, the first being the late Sir James Stirling who was honored in 1981, and who encouraged a young Foster as he began his career in the early sixties. 

Foster has designed and built office towers in Tokyo, Japan and Frankfurt, Germany and Hong Kong as well as a communications tower in Barcelona, Spain. The world's largest airport in Hong Kong was presaged by London's Third Airport at Stansted. He designed a rapid transit system for Bilbao, Spain and has recently completed a station for London's underground Jubilee Line, Canary Wharf , as well as the transport interchange at Greenwich. His global output includes furniture, offices, showrooms, warehousing facilities and industrial buildings, single residences and multiple housing units, schools, bridges, art museums and galleries, universities, sports stadia, research laboratories, shops, cultural centers, and libraries. And he designed one project that is capable of moving all around the world, a180-foot private motor yacht. 

Foster attracted attention in 1971 when he was able to deliver a permanent office building to IBM in Cosham, at the cost and within the time-frame of temporary quarters. In 1975, Foster's modernist solution for an office structure in Ipswich, England for Willis Faber & Dumas brought the first international attention to his work. The three-storey, glass-clad exterior followed irregular street patterns, reflecting its surroundings by day, but becoming transparent at night to reveal the two open plan office floors and a swimming pool on the ground level. The project is considered a model of social responsiveness, as well as being ecologically efficient. Within two years, he confirmed his ability to bring innovation in both materials and design to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. 

On a much larger and international scale, in 1979, he received the commission for the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation's headquarters, for which he designed a tower 47 stories above a ground floor plaza. 

Foster's life comes close to being a Horatio Alger story. He was born into a working class family in a suburb of Manchester, England in 1935, where the odds of his making a career in a profession were highly unlikely. He attended a local high school and did well, showing an early interest in architecture. After a series of odd jobs, and after his national service in the Royal Air Force, he enrolled in Manchester University where he won nearly every scholarship and fellowship available, eventually winning one to attend Yale University in the United States. 

Since his first commission some 35 years ago, he has won worldwide acclaim for his modernist buildings, including his profession's highest honors. In 1990, he received a Knighthood from the Queen of England and in 1997 was appointed by the Queen to the Order of Merit. 

Pritzker Prize jury chairman, J. Carter Brown, commented, "Rooted in the grand tradition of 20th century modernism, Sir Norman Foster transcends categorization. At whatever scale, from a glass elevator to an airport, his vision forges the materials of our age into a crystalline, lyrical purity that is highly personal, brilliantly functional, and — shy as we are about using the word — just downright beautiful." 

Bill Lacy, the executive director of the Pritzker Prize, quoted from the jury citation which states, "His design objectives are guided not only toward the overall beauty and function of a project, but for the well-being of those people who will be the end-users. This social dimension to his work translates as making every effort to transform and improve the quality of life. In the early seventies, he pioneered the notion that the workplace could be a pleasant environment." 

Lacy, who is an architect himself and president of the State University of New York at Purchase, added, "Sir Norman Foster's buildings set a standard for design excellence in the use of modern technology pushed to its artistic limits. His buildings represent the highest attainment of contemporary architecture in the 20th century and will undoubtedly be the design standard for much of the architecture of the next century." 

The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. 

The distinguished jury that selected Sir Norman Foster as the 1999 Laureate consists of its founding chairman, J. Carter Brown, director emeritus of the National Gallery of Art, and chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts; and alphabetically: Giovanni Agnelli, chairman of Fiat from Torino, Italy; Ada Louise Huxtable, author and architectural critic of New York; Toshio Nakamura, architectural writer/editor of Tokyo, Japan; Jorge Silvetti, chairman, department of architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design; and Lord Rothschild, chairman of the National Heritage Memorial Fund of Great Britain and formerly the chairman of that country's National Gallery. 

The prize presentation ceremony moves to different locations around the world each year, paying homage to historic and contemporary architecture. This year's ceremony will be held in Berlin at the Altes Museum, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in the 19th century, and the New National Gallery, a 1967 Mies van der Rohe building. 

Philip Johnson was the first Pritzker Laureate in 1979. Renzo Piano of Italy was the 21st Laureate on the 20th anniversary this past year. Two architects were named to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the prize in 1988: the late Gordon Bunshaft of the United States and Oscar Niemeyer of Brazil, hence the reason for 21 laureates in 20 years. There have been seven laureates chosen from the United States, and with Sir Norman, 15 laureates from 11 other countries around the world. 

The field of architecture was chosen by the Pritzker family because of their keen interest in building due to their involvement with developing the Hyatt Hotels around the world; also because architecture was a creative endeavor not included in the Nobel Prizes. The procedures were modeled after the Nobels, with the final selection being made by the international jury with all deliberations and voting in secret. Nominations are continuous from year to year with over 500 nominees from more than 40 countries being considered each year. 

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Note: In addition to all of the detail about Sir Norman Foster in the media kit, you will find a wealth of information on the web site, www.fosterandpartners.com.

Sir Norman Foster's pursuit of the art and science of architecture has resulted in one building triumph after another, each one in its own way, unique. He has re-invented the tall building, producing Europe's tallest and arguably the first skyscraper with an ecological conscience, the Commerzbank in Frankfurt. He cares passionately for the environment, designing accordingly. From his very first projects, it was evident that he would embrace the most advanced technology appropriate to the task, producing results sensitive to their sites, always with imaginative solutions to design problems. 

His design objectives are guided not only toward the overall beauty and function of a project, but for the well-being of those people who will be the end-users. This social dimension to his work translates as making every effort to transform and improve the quality of life. In the early seventies, he pioneered the notion that the workplace could be a pleasant environment with one of his first notable projects, the Willis Faber and Dumas offices, that included a swimming pool and grassy rooftop park for employees. 

In the three decades since, Sir Norman has produced a collection of buildings and products noted for their clarity, invention, and sheer artistic virtuosity. His work ranges in scale from the modest, but exquisite new addition of the Sackler Galleries to the existing galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and the serenely simple limestone addition to the Joslyn Museum in Omaha, Nebraska — to a pair of grand mega-projects, both in Hong Kong, the world's largest air terminal, and the much-acclaimed Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. 

Proof of his ability to produce remarkable solutions for diverse programs in urban settings is his sensitive placement and design of the Carré d'Art, a cultural center next to a revered Roman temple, dating from 500 BC, in the heart of Nîmes, France. Such a juxtaposition of contemporary and ancient architecture has rarely been achieved so successfully. His transformation of more recent historic icons — the Reichstag in Berlin and the new Great Court of the British Museum — are brilliant redesign-renovations. 

His design versatility is further demonstrated with his experimentation and innovation in designing a wide range of products from a simple door handle, to tables and tableware, chairs and other furniture for storage systems, book stacks, desks, exhibition stands, and street furniture as well as a solar powered bus and private motor yacht. His is a continuing process of discovery, inspiration, invention and innovation. 

For Sir Norman's steadfast devotion to the principles of architecture as an art form, for his contributions in defining an architecture with high technological standards, and for his appreciation of the human values involved in producing consistently well-designed projects, he is awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, with warm wishes for continued success in the new millennium. 

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Additional comments from 
individual Pritzker Prize Jurors

"Rooted in the grand tradition of 20th century modernism, Sir Norman Foster transcends categorization. At whatever scale, from a glass elevator to an airport, his vision forges the materials of our age into a crystalline, lyrical purity that is highly personal, brilliantly functional, and _ shy as we are about using the word _ just downright beautiful." 

J. Carter Brown 
Chairman, Pritzker Jury 

"Sir Norman Foster's buildings set a standard for design excellence in the use of modern technology pushed to its artistic limits. His buildings represent the highest attainment of contemporary architecture in the 20th century and will undoubtedly be the design standard for much of the architecture of the next century." 

Bill Lacy 
Executive Director 

"An enormously impressive body of work developed over many years, this architecture is notable for its assured and consistent style — the buildings are beautiful, elegantly conceived and exquisitely carried out in the most basic terms, the expert use and expression of the structural technology of the 20th century. The work is also distinguished by a sensitivity to site and surroundings. Sir Norman Foster is as fine a planner as architect, which enriches the total value of the achievement in urbanistic and human terms. 

Ada Louise Huxtable 
Pritzker Juror 

"Following a period of turbulent exploration of bold forms, and outreaching ideas in architecture, the pendulum of design has become centered on a stable practice represented by Sir Norman Foster. He embodies the architect's ability, through technology, to create lasting edifices, not romantic, but classical in the true sense of the word." 

Toshio Nakamura 
Pritzker Juror 

"What is so remarkable with Sir Norman Foster is that he has propelled the practice of architecture to new limits, both in the range of scale and the variety of programs that are possible for a firm to carry, while maintaining the care and design excellence usually associated with small 'studio' offices. Thus while his extraordinary output has usually been associated with large projects and awesome technical virtuosity, it is at the human scale that Sir Norman's work graces us with the surprising pleasure of sensual details, delicate craft and responsive urbanity. Indeed, he has mastered the art of integrating successfully the colossal gesture with the small detail. It is not surprising then, that his work has elicited indisuputable popular appeal in spite of the reductive 'high tech' characterization with which the professional press has continuously labeled it." 

Jorge Silvetti 
Pritzker Juror 

The Bronze Medallion

The bronze medallion awarded to each Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is based on designs of Louis Sullivan, famed Chicago architect generally acknowledged as the father of the skyscraper. On one side is the name of the prize. On the reverse, three words are inscribed, "firmness, commodity and delight," These are the three conditions referred to by Henry Wotton in his 1624 treatise, The Elements of Architecture, which was a translation of thoughts originally set down nearly 2000 years ago by Marcus Vitruvius in his Ten Books on Architecture, dedicated to the Roman Emperor Augustus. Wotton, who did the translation when he was England's first ambassador to Venice, used the complete quote as: "The end is to build well. Well-building hath three conditions: commodity, firmness and delight." 

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