Foster + Partners Portfolio: 1967-2017

(Paperback)

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Foster + Partners Portfolio is a complete and extraordinary account of the first fifty years of Foster + Partners - a globally renowned studio for sustainable architecture, urbanism and design. Over the past half-century, the practice - founded as Foster Associates in 1967 - has grown into a multi-disciplinary studio, motivated by sustainable design and leading through creativity and innovation. This book provides a beautiful visual record that celebrates the practice's remarkable breadth of works - both built and unbuilt. For the first time ever, Portfolio features photography of every project completed in the practice's first five decades, as well as drawings of its most important unrealised designs. Through over 480 carefully edited images - many previously unpublished - the book highlights the enormous contribution the practice has made to a range of design disciplines. Portfolio is delineated into five decade-long chapters, spanning from 1967 to 2017. Photographic pairings, acting as a chronological record of over 340 built works, provide the book's visual narrative. Drawings of unbuilt works appear at the end of each decade, celebrating the people behind the projects and hinting at the depth of ideas that permeate the practice. By placing projects side-by-side that would not normally be seen together, the book offers new readings of Foster + Partners' oeuvre. Always thought-provoking, often surprising and sometimes humorous, the juxtaposed photographs and drawings have been chosen to illuminate evolving design ideas rather than detail the finished architecture. Connected by colour and light, or contrasted by form and function, the image pairings are shown without the responsibility of spatial explanation. This abstraction puts the viewer close to the creative spark of the architect and offers a unique insight into one of the most inventive studios in the world. SELLING POINTS: . Featuring photography of every completed work from the practice's first fifty years - from Reliance Controls in 1967 to Apple Park in 2017 - Foster + Partners Portfolio is the only comprehensive book on the complete work of the renowned practice ever published . Foster + Partners Portfolio features previously unpublished photography and drawings of some of the practice's most significant built and unbuilt works . Features Foster + Partners' recent work, including the European headquarters of Bloomberg in London - winner of the 2018 RIBA Stirling Prize 487 colour, 76 b/w images

Author Bio

Tom Wright is an editor and writer specialising in the arts, architecture and the built environment. He is the in-house editor at Foster + Partners and was formerly an editor at Phaidon Press and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. Foster + Partners is a global studio for architecture, urbanism and design, rooted in sustainability, which was founded fifty years ago in 1967 by Norman Foster. Since then, he and the team around him have established an international practice with a worldwide reputation for thoughtful and pioneering design, working as a single studio that is both ethnically and culturally diverse. The studio integrates the skills of architecture with engineering, both structural and environmental, urbanism, interior and industrial design, model and film making, aeronautics and many more - our collegiate working environment is similar to a compact university. These diverse skills make us capable of tackling a wide range of projects, particularly those of considerable complexity and scale. Design is at the core of everything that we do. We design buildings, spaces and cities; we listen, we question, and we innovate. Norman Foster is founder and executive chairman of Foster + Partners, an international studio for architecture, design and engineering. Over the past five decades the practice has pioneered a sustainable approach to architecture and urbanism through a wide range of work, from masterplans to offices, cultural buildings, infrastructure and industrial design. In 1999, he became the 21st Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate and was honoured with a Life Peerage, becoming Lord Foster of Thames Bank. Peter Buchanan worked as an architect and urban designer in various parts of Africa, Europe and the Middle East before starting to publish. He is now a freelance writer, curator and consultant who has published several hundred essays and articles in journals world-wide. His many books include the five volumes of Renzo Piano Building Workshop: Complete Works (Phaidon Press) and Ten Shades of Green (W. W. Norton) that accompanied the travelling exhibition he curated about sustainable architecture.