Norman Foster: Drawings, 1958-2008

From his student days to the present, star architect Norman Foster (born 1935) has used drawing as an analytical and pedagogical tool, as a conduit for dialogue between eye and mind. Foster's earliest drawings for projects such as Creek Vean and Waterfront Housing are almost picturesque in their integration of building and landscape; in the 1970s, he uses drawing to devise and then explain such typological subversions as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters. In the 1980s, Foster's sketches for Stanstead airport make plain his revolutionary effect on airport architecture, paving the way for a new generation of aerated terminals with luminous roofs; plans for the Carré d'Art in Nimes exemplify his reinvention of how we envision and construct heritage sites today. From buildings of the past two decades, highlights include a fantastic sequence of drawings for the Collserola Tower, glorious sketches of the Reichstag dome, the Millenium bridge, the library at Berlin's Free University, the Expressionist penumbras of Abu Dhabi's Masdar City and the Sierra Leone school, where scarcity of resources necessitated and produced great conceptual elegance and clarity. In this magnificently produced, slipcased and linen-bound two-volume collection, spanning a half-century of works across over 200 drawings, each of Norman Foster's projects is seen to command its own graphic style, and is narrated eloquently by the architect's pen.