Décrit un principe que Foster manie avec une rare virtuosité, à savoir "retourner" un intérieur, en mettant à nu la structure portante et les unités fonctionnelles du bâtiment. Le résultat, fascinant et fragile, n'est pas sans évoquer la complexité d'une machinerie, contrebalancée par l'élégance d'éléments high tech, qui évitent à l'ensemble tout caractère monumental.

The author of The Language of Things “takes readers on an engrossing tour of Foster’s life” from childhood to the world-renowned buildings he designed (Publishers Weekly, starred review). A leading pioneer of high-tech architecture, Norman Foster has worked across the globe, collaborating with luminaries such as R. Buckminster Fuller to Steve Jobs. Born in Manchester, England, Foster grew up in poverty, the son of a machine painter. He served in the Royal Air Force and worked in a local architect’s office before returning to school for architecture. Foster went on to design the Reichstag, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banks headquarters in London and China, the new Wembley stadium and the British Museum's new court. He is also responsible for the design of Beijing's new airport, the Rossiya tower in Moscow, one of the towers at Ground Zero in Manhattan, as well as numerous other buildings around the world. In this insightful biography, Deyan Sudjic charts Foster’s remarkable life and career.

The works of Norman Foster from 1993 - 2004 are the focus of this book, the fifth instalment of a multi-volume retrospective. The text about each project is accompanied by colour photographs and detailed plans.

"The nature of colour should change -no longer just a thin layer of change, but something that genuinely alters perception" -this stipulation of Rem Koolhaas is echoes by the world famous architects and designers Alessandro Mendini and Norman Foster. In this volume, they present between them a total of 90 colours -each covering half a page -accompanied by comments on the background, the significance and the applications of the colours. Studies of colours from each office form the basis of this book, and were previously only available in extravagant individual editions. With this comprehensive and consistent presentation of the varying approaches to colour, we have a compendium which shows the wide use of colour in today's technologically advanced architecture with its modern, post-modern and deconstructive orientation. The range of examples of the colours in practice includes load-bearing structures, facades, interior design, furnishing and the entire specturm of product design.

Norman Foster, one of the most consistent advocates of architecture based on modern technology, achieved a world-wide reputation with the headquarters for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in Hong Kong, Stansted Airport in London, Century Tower in Tokyo and his telecommunications tower in Barcelona. His most important projects in Germany are the conversion of the Reichstag building in Berlin and the new Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt am Main.

Sir Norman Foster's architectural projects have transformed cityscapes, renewed vital transportation hubs and rejuvenated town centres. Ambitious and controversial, Foster succeeds in marrying a modern sensibility with a masterly treatment of the architecture of the past. His commissions include the reconstruction of the Reichstag in Berlin and the new Hong Kong international airport.