POWER HOUSE

At 90 years of age, Lord Norman Foster – a pioneer of high-tech architecture – remains at the height of his powers, channelling his formidable energy into global projects, his eponymous foundation in Madrid, and a Sydney exhibition celebrating the civic vision of Foster + Partners, the international practice he founded.

- Words KAREN MCCARTNEY

OCTOBER 2025 encapsulated the span of Norman Foster's creative reach. Architects for the Birds – his charity raising funds through a Christie's auction for brain cancer care in support of the Tessa Jowell Foundation – was launched. Alongside his own design For the Birds (“an assembly of components that are sculptural but also functional”), he invited peers including Jacques Herzog, Renzo Piano and Grafton Architects to contribute designs.

Eleven days later came the opening of JPMorgan Chase's global HQ on New York's Park Avenue – a 423-metre, 60-storey all-electric tower that boasts net-zero operating emissions and enhanced public space. For the USA's largest bank, luxury and power are conveyed through deep setbacks tapering to a pinnacle, a muscular bronze facade, acres of book-matched travertine and two vast Gerhard Richter artworks in the foyer.

Scale does not determine significance for Foster. “I am motivated by the love of architecture, by the love of design, and I don't see the distinction between, literally, a bird feeder and a building,” he says. His philosophy blurs the line between the monumental and the domestic, asserting that design thinking – attention to proportion, material, climate and human behaviour – transcends category, and that every problem deserves imagination.