Norman Foster: Ecosophy of Systems

‘Etymologically, the word “ecosophy” combines oikos and sophia, “household” and “wisdom”. As in “ecology”, “eco-” has an appreciably broader meaning than the immediate family, household, and community. “Earth household” is closer to the mark. So an ecosophy becomes a philosophical world-view or system inspired by the conditions of life in the ecosphere.’

Arne Næss1

When we think of the work of Norman Foster, it is his most spectacular projects that come to mind, the ones that seem to epitomise the image of a city, a region, or that, more simply, have changed the shape of a site or the configuration of a place. And the list is a long one. We are talking of an architect who has worked in most countries of the world and has undertaken a huge diversity of projects, most of which have impacted on the very structure of the urban fabric. Airports, transport networks, headquarters of international companies, public buildings, major works of art, urban development programmes, museums – Norman Foster has explored the whole complexity of industrial society through hundreds of projects, some only planned, some realised, in every part of the globe. He has constantly adapted the size and composition of his practice, founded in 1967, to the evolution of the world’s economy, which had centred on the United States during the post-war period, but then opened up to China, Russia, India and South America. In the face of this globalised world, Norman Foster has developed a practice that has grown from its base in London to form a network of international offices that is better able to respond to multiple commissions. Unlike those large anonymous firms that produce equally anonymous projects all across the globe, and also unlike those architects whose names have almost become brands, Norman Foster has created a practice that has preserved its own identity as a global enterprise constantly open to new research and innovation. ‘Foster + Partners is coming to resemble not so much any previous large architectural practice,’ explains Deyan Sudjic, ‘but more a cross between a leading school of architecture and a global research-based consultancy.’2

What has made the practice so unique is the configuration it adopted when moving to Fitzroy Street in 1971 – one which implied a collegial approach and was mirrored in its functional and spatial organisation. Foster has described it as ‘[f]irst of all the studio. An open, flexible space; a range of activities; changeable; a test-bed in some respects ... the idea of architects, engineers, economists coming together in a dynamic relationship, changing hats and changing roles in a shared endeavour.’ 3 Even during the period when he was collaborating with Richard Buckminster Fuller, Foster was developing a new type of structure for his practice that seemed to echo the ideas of Stafford Beer, the author of Brain of the Firm (1972). Beer proposed innovative forms of management based on collective experience and learning, and a democratic approach to decision-making and control directly inspired by cybernetics, which he dubbed ‘syntegration’, a portmanteau of two concepts initiated by Buckminster Fuller, ‘tensegrity’ and ‘synergy’. The formalisation of this way of thinking about the organisation, which implied a complete overhaul of design logics and methods, is evident in the development of the Foster Associates practice, with its adoption of a participatory approach that changed not only the nature of the architect’s role, but also the practice’s relationship with its many stakeholders and clients. This involved rethinking the functioning of an architectural practice in a state of perpetual evolution –one which has to face up to the social, economic and ecological problems of a world in flux – and this structuring principle underlies the activities of Foster + Partners to this day.

In much of his writing, Norman Foster dispenses with the traditional image of the architect-creator, the academic function of the author, and the notion of the architectural object. He instead foregrounds a synthetic vision of the organisation and its infrastructure. He attributes the origin of this approach to his early years, when he was a young teenager attracted by a complex world of gadgets, which he would see represented in his Eagle comic. It was during his youth in Manchester that he discovered architecture, both in the streets he frequented – he admired, among others, the Lancaster Arcade (1871), Manchester Town Hall (1877) designed by Alfred Waterhouse, and the Daily Express Building (1939) by Owen Williams – and in the books of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. The critical interest that his early surveys of the mechanism of mills ( Post Mill at Bourne , 1958) still attracts today shows that the concepts that he developed at that time would be incessantly revised and remodelled as his career progressed. While he travelled in Italy and Denmark, discovering the work of Jørn Utzon and Arne Jacobsen, he received a Henry Fellowship, enabling him to study at Yale University, where he met Richard Rogers. The teaching of the then head of the architecture department, Paul Rudolph, strengthened Foster’s structural thinking about space, which resulted in a style of drawing that used perspectival sections – the first marker of what would become a whole new methodology. ‘Many of these drawings,’ Foster explains, ‘especially the perspective sections, would encapsulate in a single image the range of Rudolph’s concerns as an architect. There was his quest to define and model space with light and planar surfaces.’ 4 The charismatic Professor