Foster, Norman Robert (1935– )

English architect of the high-tech school. His works in England include the Willis Faber & Dumas insurance offices, Ipswich (1975); the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, Norwich (1977); Stansted Airport, Essex (1991), the Millennium Bridge, London (2000), and the new Wembley Stadium (2007). He was awarded the Stirling Prize twice: in 1998, for the American Hangar at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, England, and in 2004, for his 30 St Mary Axe office building (popularly known as ‘the gherkin’) in London's financial district. He won the Pritzker Prize in 1999.

Foster has won numerous international awards for his industrial architecture and design, including RIBA awards for the Stansted project and the Sackler Galleries extension at the Royal Academy of Art, London (1992). His works abroad include the headquarters of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) in Hong Kong (1986), and New York's Hearst Tower (2006). He was knighted in 1990.