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104-539: Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank (born 1 June 1935) is an English architect and designer. Closely associated with the development of high-tech architecture , Foster is recognised as a key figure in British modernist architecture. His architectural practice Foster + Partners , first founded in 1967 as Foster Associates, is the largest in the United Kingdom, and maintains offices internationally. He

208-494: A Verb , he wrote: "I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe." Fuller wrote that the universe's natural analytic geometry was based on tetrahedra arrays. He developed this in several ways, from the close-packing of spheres and the number of compressive or tensile members required to stabilize an object in space. One confirming result

312-768: A bakery making crumpets . During this time, he also studied at the local library in Levenshulme. His talent and hard work was recognised in 1959 when he won £105 and a RIBA silver medal for what he described as "a measured drawing of a windmill ". The windmill he drew was Bourn Windmill , Cambridgeshire . After graduating in 1961, Foster won the Henry Fellowship to the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut, where he met future business partner Richard Rogers and earned his master's degree. At

416-455: A belief in a "spirit of the age" that should be incorporated and applied throughout each building. The influence of Le Corbusier , Walter Gropius , and Mies van de Rohe is extensive throughout many of the principles and designs of high-tech architecture. Some of the earliest practitioners of high-tech architecture included the British architecture group Archigram , whose members frequently designed advanced futuristic buildings and cities. On

520-552: A commitment to "the search for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution of humanity in accordance with them ... finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more." By 1928, Fuller was living in Greenwich Village and spending much of his time at the popular café Romany Marie 's, where he had spent an evening in conversation with Marie and Eugene O'Neill several years earlier. Fuller accepted

624-432: A family inheritance. Fuller associated the word Dymaxion , a blend of the words dy namic , max imum , and tens ion to sum up the goal of his study, "maximum gain of advantage from minimal energy input". The Dymaxion was not an automobile but rather the 'ground-taxying mode' of a vehicle that might one day be designed to fly, land and drive — an "Omni-Medium Transport" for air, land and water. Fuller focused on

728-520: A feeling of openness, honesty, and transparency. Early high-tech buildings were referred to by historian Reyner Banham as "serviced sheds" due to their exposure of mechanical services in addition to the structure. Most of these early examples used exposed structural steel as their material of choice. As hollow structural sections , (developed by Stewarts and Lloyds and known in the UK as Rectangular Hollow Section (RHS)) had only become widely available in

832-488: A five-acre, raised public plaza, completely devoid of cars, so pedestrians could walk freely through the complex. Additionally, the World Trade Center had led to the construction of a brand new PATH station, serving the rail commuters coming from New Jersey into New York. This approach to building, with the architect having just as much responsibility to the city surrounding their building as the building itself,

936-580: A full recovery. He also suffered a heart attack. Foster was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1990 Birthday Honours , and thereby granted the title Sir . He was appointed to the Order of Merit (OM) in 1997. In the 1999 Birthday Honours , Foster's elevation to the peerage was announced and he was raised to the peerage as Baron Foster of Thames Bank , of Reddish in the County of Greater Manchester in July. Foster

1040-440: A full skin of concrete it was not until 1949 that Fuller erected a geodesic dome building that could sustain its own weight with no practical limits. It was 4.3 meters (14 feet) in diameter and constructed of aluminium aircraft tubing and a vinyl-plastic skin, in the form of an icosahedron . To prove his design, Fuller suspended from the structure's framework several students who had helped him build it. The U.S. government recognized

1144-485: A habit of being familiar with and knowledgeable about the materials that his later projects would require. Fuller earned a machinist 's certification, and knew how to use the press brake , stretch press, and other tools and equipment used in the sheet metal trade. Fuller attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts, and after that began studying at Harvard College , where he was affiliated with Adams House . He

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1248-551: A job decorating the interior of the café in exchange for meals, giving informal lectures several times a week, and models of the Dymaxion house were exhibited at the café. Isamu Noguchi arrived during 1929— Constantin Brâncuși , an old friend of Marie's, had directed him there —and Noguchi and Fuller were soon collaborating on several projects, including the modeling of the Dymaxion car based on recent work by Aurel Persu . It

1352-585: A key work of that movement, and for having been the first time in the history of stained glass that computer-assisted design had been utilised in the creative process. Foster gained a reputation for designing office buildings. In the 1980s he designed the HSBC Main Building in Hong Kong for the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (a founding member of the future HSBC Holdings plc ), at

1456-497: A longtime hobby. Upon returning to Manchester, Foster went against his parents' wishes and sought employment elsewhere. He had seven O-levels by this time, and applied to work at a duplicating machine company, telling the interviewer he had applied for the prospect of a company car and a £1,000 salary. Instead, he became an assistant to a contract manager at a local architects, John E. Beardshaw and Partners. The staff advised him that if he wished to become an architect, he should prepare

1560-469: A new apparatus for human propulsion of small boats. By age 12, he had invented a 'push pull' system for propelling a rowboat by use of an inverted umbrella connected to the transom with a simple oar lock which allowed the user to face forward to point the boat toward its destination. Later in life, Fuller took exception to the term "invention." Years later, he decided that this sort of experience had provided him with not only an interest in design, but also

1664-1038: A new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires. ~ The Gherkin in London. ~The Reichstag Dome in Berlin. ~The Great Court of the British Museum . ~ Hearst Tower in New York. ~The Millennium Bridge in London. ~ Chesa Futura in St. Moritz . ~ Carré d'Art in Nîmes. ~The Bilbao metro . High-tech architecture High-tech architecture focuses on creating adaptable buildings through choice of materials, internal structural elements , and programmatic design. It seeks to avoid links to

1768-840: A part of Lancashire . He was the only child of Robert and Lilian Foster (née Smith). The family moved to Levenshulme , near Manchester , where they lived in poverty. His father was a machine painter at the Metropolitan-Vickers works in Trafford Park , which influenced Norman to take up engineering, design, and, ultimately, architecture. His mother worked in a local bakery. Foster's parents were diligent and hard workers who often had neighbours and family members look after her son, which Foster later believed restricted his relationship with his mother and father. Foster attended Burnage Grammar School for Boys in Burnage , where he

1872-590: A portfolio of drawings using the perspective and shop drawings from Beardshaw's practice as an example. Beardshaw was so impressed with Foster's drawings that he promoted him to the drawing department. In 1956 Foster began study at the School of Architecture and City Planning , part of the University of Manchester . He was ineligible for a maintenance grant , so he took part-time jobs to fund his studies, including an ice-cream salesman, bouncer, and night shifts at

1976-615: A recurring theme in Foster's future projects. After the four separated in 1967, Foster and Wendy founded a new practice, Foster Associates. From 1968 to 1983, Foster collaborated with American architect Richard Buckminster Fuller on several projects that became catalysts in the development of an environmentally sensitive approach to design, such as the Samuel Beckett Theatre at St Peter's College , Oxford. Foster Associates concentrated on industrial buildings until 1969, when

2080-436: A sense of factory creation and broad distribution. Tensile structures, cross beams, and exposed support and maintenance elements are all important components found in high-tech designs. A focus on strong, simplistic, and transparent elements all connect high-tech as a style to the principles of engineering. The engineer Anthony Hunt was hugely influential in both the design, choice of materials, and ultimate expression of many of

2184-487: A series of ideals that its practitioners felt were reflective of the "spirit of the age". Concerns over adaptability, sustainability, and the changing industrial world drove a shift in the way that many architects around the world approached the challenge of designing buildings. Norman Foster's HSBC Building was specifically designed to be built over a public plaza, so as not to take up more land in space-conscious Hong Kong. Minoru Yamasaki's World Trade Center had centered around

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2288-442: A transportation fuel by people commuting to work represents a huge net loss compared to their actual earnings. An encapsulation quotation of his views might best be summed up as: "There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance." Though Fuller was concerned about sustainability and human survival under the existing socioeconomic system, he remained optimistic about humanity's future. Defining wealth in terms of knowledge as

2392-489: A vehicle at our disposal, [Fuller] felt that human travel, like that of birds, would no longer be confined to airports, roads, and other bureaucratic boundaries, and that autonomous free-thinking human beings could live and prosper wherever they chose. — Lloyd S. Sieden, Bucky Fuller's Universe , 2000 To his young daughter Allegra: Fuller described the Dymaxion as a " zoom-mobile , explaining that it could hop off

2496-488: A white sphere of light. A voice spoke directly to Fuller, and declared: From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to

2600-527: Is a key concept of high-tech architecture, though this technique may also be applied to generate an aesthetic of dynamic light and shadow across the facade of a building. Color also plays an important role in the decoration of high-tech buildings, as various colors can be used to represent different service elements or to give the building the appearance of a set of architectural diagrams. As of 2016, recent Structural Impressionism has two major trends: braced systems and diagrid systems. Both structural systems have

2704-434: Is an important component of high-tech buildings. The HSBC Building in Hong Kong, designed by Norman Foster, is another excellent example of a high-tech building designed to be changed over time according to the needs of its users. Its use of suspended floor panels and the design of its social spaces as individual towers both place emphasis on the new approach to creating and servicing an office building. The high-tech style

2808-538: Is heavily valued, high-tech designs strive to evoke an ever dynamic sense of movement and change. Adaptability, flexibility, and openness are all key aims of the high-tech style. To obviously and creatively display the functional nature of service elements and to clearly communicate the changeable nature of the spaces created inside them are important goals of the vast majority of high-tech buildings. Richard Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller ( / ˈ f ʊ l ər / ; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983)

2912-493: Is now Grade I listed . The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts , an art gallery and museum on the campus of the University of East Anglia , Norwich , was one of the first major public buildings to be designed by Foster, completed in 1978, and became grade II* listed in December 2012. In 1981, Foster received a commission for the construction of a new terminal building at London's Stansted Airport . Executed by Foster + Partners,

3016-514: Is often interpreted as glorifying technology and emphasizing the functional purpose of each element of the building. These designs incorporate elements that obviously display the technical nature of the components within them, creating a sense of honest, open transparency. The Centre Pompidou in Paris, by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, exemplifies the technicality and focus on the exposure of service elements. The externalization of functional components

3120-738: Is the president of the Norman Foster Foundation , created to 'promote interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects, designers and urbanists to anticipate the future'. The foundation, which opened in June 2017, is based in Madrid and operates globally. Foster was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1999. Norman Robert Foster was born in 1935 in Reddish , two miles (3.2 km) north of Stockport , then

3224-693: The American Humanist Association named him the 1969 Humanist of the Year. In 1976, Fuller was a key participant at UN Habitat I , the first UN forum on human settlements. Fuller's last filmed interview took place on June 21, 1983, in which he spoke at Norman Foster 's Royal Gold Medal for architecture ceremony. His speech can be watched in the archives of the AA School of Architecture, in which he spoke after Sir Robert Sainsbury 's introductory speech and Foster's keynote address. In

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3328-455: The Dymaxion car project. International recognition began with the success of huge geodesic domes during the 1950s. Fuller lectured at North Carolina State University in Raleigh in 1949, where he met James Fitzgibbon, who would become a close friend and colleague. Fitzgibbon was director of Geodesics, Inc. and Synergetics, Inc. the first licensees to design geodesic domes. Thomas C. Howard

3432-884: The Gold Medal award from the American Institute of Architects the same year. Also in 1970, Fuller received the title of Master Architect from Alpha Rho Chi (APX), the national fraternity for architecture and the allied arts. In 1976, he received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1977, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement . He also received numerous other awards, including

3536-520: The Presidential Medal of Freedom , presented to him on February 23, 1983, by President Ronald Reagan . Fuller was born on July 12, 1895, in Milton, Massachusetts , the son of Richard Buckminster Fuller, a prosperous leather and tea merchant, and Caroline Wolcott Andrews. He was a grand-nephew of Margaret Fuller , an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with

3640-577: The U.S. Navy in World War I , as a shipboard radio operator, as an editor of a publication, and as commander of the crash rescue boat USS Inca . After discharge, he worked again in the meat-packing industry, acquiring management experience. In 1917, he married Anne Hewlett. During the early 1920s, he and his father-in-law developed the Stockade Building System for producing lightweight, weatherproof, and fireproof housing—although

3744-657: The University of Bath . Foster received The Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in 2007 to honour his contributions to the advancement of tall buildings. He was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture , for the University of Technology Petronas in Malaysia, and in 2008 he was granted an honorary degree from the Dundee School of Architecture at

3848-603: The University of Dundee . In 2009, he received the Prince of Asturias Award in the category 'Arts'. In 2017, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Lord Jacob Rothschild during the International Achievement Summit in London. In 2012, Foster was among the British cultural figures selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in

3952-820: The University of Pennsylvania , Bryn Mawr College , Haverford College , Swarthmore College , and the University City Science Center ; as a result of this affiliation, the University of Pennsylvania appointed him university professor emeritus in 1975. Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy , such as solar- and wind-derived electricity. He hoped for an age of "omni-successful education and sustenance of all humanity." Fuller referred to himself as "the property of universe" and during one radio interview he gave later in life, declared himself and his work "the property of all humanity." For his lifetime of work,

4056-418: The "technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth needs of life", his analysis of the condition of "Spaceship Earth" caused him to conclude that at a certain time during the 1970s, humanity had attained an unprecedented state. He was convinced that the accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with the quantities of major recyclable resources that had already been extracted from

4160-519: The 1990s. Foster + Partners submitted a plan for a 385-metre-tall (1,263 ft) skyscraper, the London Millennium Tower , but its height was seen as excessive for London's skyline. The proposal was scrapped and instead Foster proposed 30 St Mary Axe, popularly referred to as "the gherkin", after its shape. Foster worked with engineers to integrate complex computer systems with the most basic physical laws, such as convection . In 1999,

4264-553: The American transcendentalism movement. The unusual middle name, Buckminster, was an ancestral family name. As a child, Richard Buckminster Fuller tried numerous variations of his name. He used to sign his name differently each year in the guest register of his family summer vacation home at Bear Island, Maine. He finally settled on R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller spent much of his youth on Bear Island , in Penobscot Bay off

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4368-803: The Apple offices, Apple Campus 2 (now called Apple Park ), in Cupertino, California, US. Apple's board and staff continued to work with Foster as the design was completed and the construction in progress. The circular building was opened to employees in April 2017, six years after Jobs died in 2011. In January 2007, the Sunday Times reported that Foster had called in Catalyst, a corporate finance house, to find buyers for Foster + Partners. Foster does not intend to retire, but rather to sell his 80–90% holding in

4472-439: The absolute expression of this principle. The Centre Pompidou, for example, has several elements that are built up or covered over due to concerns over fire safety and structural soundness. In many cases high-tech buildings exhibit compromises between radical honesty in design and considerations of safety in implementation. High-tech architecture balances art and engineering as its primary themes, and as such incurs trade-offs between

4576-500: The aesthetics of the two disciplines. High-tech architecture has generated some criticism for its forays into home building and design, an issue it shares in common with Modernism. Many of the houses designed by high-tech architects were never inhabited by anyone other than themselves or their close relatives. Many outside observers found the high-tech style's focus on industry and expression of services to be antithetical to comfort and home living. Norman Foster's housing at Milton Keynes

4680-536: The architectural firm Fuller & Sadao Inc., whose first project was to design the large geodesic dome for the U.S. Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. This building is now the " Montreal Biosphère ". In 1962, the artist and searcher John McHale wrote the first monograph on Fuller, published by George Braziller in New York. After employing several Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU) graduate students to rebuild his models following an apartment fire in

4784-535: The building to enhance the quality of life for the company's 1,200 employees. The building has a full-height glass façade moulded to the medieval street plan and contributes drama, subtly shifting from opaque, reflective black to a glowing back-lit transparency as the sun sets. The design was inspired by the Daily Express Building in Manchester that Foster had admired as a youngster. The building

4888-425: The building, recognised as a landmark work of high-tech architecture, was opened to the public in 1991, and was awarded the 1990 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe Award. As part of the project's development, in 1988 Foster and British artist Brian Clarke made several proposals for an integral stained glass artwork for the terminal building; the principal proposal would have seen

4992-472: The coast of Maine. He attended Froebelian Kindergarten He was dissatisfied with the way geometry was taught in school, disagreeing with the notions that a chalk dot on the blackboard represented an "empty" mathematical point , or that a line could stretch off to infinity . To him these were illogical, and led to his work on synergetics . He often made items from materials he found in the woods, and sometimes made his own tools. He experimented with designing

5096-525: The company valued at £300 million to £500 million. In 2007, he worked with Philippe Starck and Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group for the Virgin Galactic plans. Foster currently sits on the board of trustees at architectural charity Article 25 who design, construct and manage innovative, safe, sustainable buildings in some of the most inhospitable and unstable regions of

5200-681: The company was renamed Foster + Partners . By then, Foster's style had evolved from its earlier sophisticated, machine-influenced high-tech vision into a more sharp-edged modernity. In 2004, Foster designed the tallest bridge in the world , the Millau Viaduct in Southern France , with the Millau Mayor Jacques Godfrain stating; "The architect, Norman Foster, gave us a model of art." Foster worked with Steve Jobs from about 2009 until Jobs' death to design

5304-446: The company would ultimately fail in 1927. Fuller recalled 1927 as a pivotal year of his life. His daughter Alexandra had died in 1922 of complications from polio and spinal meningitis just before her fourth birthday. Barry Katz, a Stanford University scholar who wrote about Fuller, found signs that around this time in his life Fuller had developed depression and anxiety . Fuller dwelled on his daughter's death, suspecting that it

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5408-518: The completion of the Willis Faber & Dumas headquarters in Ipswich , commissioned in 1970 and completed in 1975. The client, a family-run insurance company, wanted to restore a sense of community to the workplace. In response, Foster designed a space with modular, open plan office floors, long before open-plan became the norm, and placed a roof garden, 25-metre swimming pool, and gymnasium in

5512-674: The earliest high-tech buildings in Britain, and as such many of these designs are suffused with a focus on the aesthetics of engineering and construction. Buildings built in the high-tech style often share a number of characteristic layout elements. These include an open floor plan, a large central area serviced by many smaller maintenance spaces, and repeated elements which either can be or appear to be able to be detached and replaced as needed. Spaces or elements dedicated to service and mechanical components like air conditioners, water processors, and electrical equipment are left exposed and visible to

5616-475: The early 1970s, high-tech architecture saw much experimentation with this material. The style's premier practitioners include the following: Sir Michael Hopkins , Bruce Graham , Fazlur Rahman Khan , Minoru Yamasaki , Sir Norman Foster , Sir Richard Rogers , Renzo Piano , and Santiago Calatrava . High-tech architecture was originally developed in Britain ( British High Tech architecture ), with many of its most famous early proponents being British. However,

5720-438: The earth, had attained a critical level, such that competition for necessities had become unnecessary. Cooperation had become the optimum survival strategy. He declared: "selfishness is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable ... War is obsolete." He criticized previous utopian schemes as too exclusive and thought this was a major source of their failure. To work, he felt that a utopia needed to include everyone. Fuller

5824-429: The efficiency of the entire process. Fuller also coined the word synergetics , a catch-all term used broadly for communicating experiences using geometric concepts, and more specifically, the empirical study of systems in transformation; his focus was on total system behavior unpredicted by the behavior of any isolated components. Fuller was a pioneer in thinking globally and explored energy and material efficiency in

5928-412: The fields of architecture, engineering, and design. In his book Critical Path (1981) he cited the opinion of François de Chadenèdes (1920–1999) that petroleum, from the standpoint of its replacement cost in our current energy "budget" (essentially, the net incoming solar flux ), had cost nature "over a million dollars" per U.S. gallon ($ 300,000 per litre) to produce. From this point of view, its use as

6032-725: The form of service towers, later became a widespread feature of high-tech architecture. Other projects and designs that contained or inspired elements common across the high-tech style include the Archigram member Mike Webb's concept of bowellism , the Fun Palace by Cedric Price , and the Walking City by Ron Herron , also a member of Archigram. These theoretical designs, along with many others, were circulated widely in British and American architectural circles due to their examination by Reyner Banham. These conceptual plans laid out

6136-444: The four founders of Team 4, died from cancer in 1989. From 1991 to 1995, Foster was married to Begum Sabiha Rumani Malik. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1996, Foster married Spanish psychologist and art curator Elena Ochoa . He has five children; two of the four sons he had with Cheesman are adopted. In the 2000s, Foster was diagnosed with bowel cancer and was told he had weeks to live. He received chemotherapy treatment and made

6240-523: The geodesic design by Walther Bauersfeld for the Zeiss-Planetarium , built some 28 years prior to Fuller's work, reveals that Fuller's Geodesic Dome patent (U.S. 2,682,235; awarded in 1954) is the same design as Bauersfeld's. Their construction is based on extending some basic principles to build simple " tensegrity " structures (tetrahedron, octahedron , and the closest packing of spheres), making them lightweight and stable. The geodesic dome

6344-491: The highest advantage of others. Fuller stated that this experience led to a profound re-examination of his life. He ultimately chose to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual could contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity." Speaking to audiences later in life, Fuller would frequently recount the story of his Lake Michigan experience, and its transformative impact on his life. In 1927, Fuller resolved to think independently which included

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6448-538: The ideas and elements that would later go on to be hugely influential in the works of prominent high-tech architects like Norman Foster and Nicholas Grimshaw . High-tech buildings often incorporate a range of materials reminiscent of industrial production. Steel, aluminium, glass, and concrete are all commonly found in high-tech structures, as these elements evoke a feeling of being mass-produced and widely available. Not all high-tech designs are made to accommodate truly mass-produced materials, but nonetheless seek to convey

6552-660: The importance of this work, and employed his firm Geodesics, Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina to make small domes for the Marines . Within a few years, there were thousands of such domes around the world. Fuller's first "continuous tension – discontinuous compression" geodesic dome (full sphere in this case) was constructed at the University of Oregon Architecture School in 1959 with the help of students. These continuous tension – discontinuous compression structures featured single force compression members (no flexure or bending moments) that did not touch each other and were 'suspended' by

6656-495: The landing and taxiing qualities, and noted severe limitations in its handling. The team made improvements and refinements to the platform, and Fuller noted the Dymaxion "was an invention that could not be made available to the general public without considerable improvements". The bodywork was aerodynamically designed for increased fuel efficiency and its platform featured a lightweight cromoly-steel hinged chassis, rear-mounted V8 engine, front-drive, and three-wheels. The vehicle

6760-505: The maintenance elements of a building can be understood and interpreted without issue, but the function of the interior space is difficult to guess. The Lloyd's building is an excellent example of this, wherein its service towers quite clearly communicate their function but the usage of the central atrium is difficult to determine from the exterior. While the goal of many high-tech buildings is to honestly and transparently communicate their form and function, practical considerations may prevent

6864-675: The most influential of these was Peter Cook's Plug-in City, a theoretical mega structure designed around the detach-ability and replacement of each of its individual units. The concept of removable and interchangeable elements of buildings would later become a widespread characteristic within the high-tech style. Less direct precursors included Buckminster Fuller and Frei Otto , whose focus on minimizing construction resources generated an emphasis on tensile structures, another important element in many high-tech designs. Louis Kahn's concept of "served" and "servant" spaces, particularly when implemented in

6968-436: The movement has roots in a number of earlier styles and draws inspiration from a number of architects from earlier periods. Many of the ideals communicated through high-tech architecture were derived from the early modernists of the 1920s . The concepts of transparency, honesty in materials, and a fascination with the aesthetics of industry can all be traced to modern architects. High-tech architecture, much like modernism, shares

7072-547: The other car hit the Dymaxion only after it had begun to roll over. Despite courting the interest of important figures from the auto industry, Fuller used his family inheritance to finish the second and third prototypes — eventually selling all three, dissolving Dymaxion Corporation and maintaining the Dymaxion was never intended as a commercial venture. One of the three original prototypes survives. Fuller's energy-efficient and inexpensive Dymaxion house garnered much interest, but only two prototypes were ever produced. Here

7176-458: The past, and as such eschews building materials commonly used in older styles of architecture. Common elements include hanging or overhanging floors, a lack of internal load-bearing walls , and reconfigurable spaces. Some buildings incorporate prominent, bright colors in an attempt to evoke the sense of a drawing or diagram. High-tech utilizes a focus on factory aesthetics and a large central space serviced by many smaller maintenance areas to evoke

7280-549: The period leading up to his death, his wife had been lying comatose in a Los Angeles hospital, dying of cancer. It was while visiting her there that he exclaimed, at a certain point: "She is squeezing my hand!" He then stood up, had a heart attack, and died an hour later, at age 87. His wife of 66 years died 36 hours later. They are buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Buckminster Fuller

7384-545: The practice worked on the administrative and leisure centre for Fred. Olsen Lines based in the London Docklands , which integrated workers and managers within the same office space. This was followed, in 1970, by the world's first inflatable office building for Computer Technology Limited near Hemel Hempstead , which housed 70 employees for a year. The practice's breakthrough project in England followed in 1974 with

7488-400: The principles of science to solving the problems of humanity." From 1972 until retiring as university professor emeritus in 1975, Fuller held a joint appointment at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville , where he had designed the dome for the campus Religious Center in 1971. During this period, he also held a joint fellowship at a consortium of Philadelphia -area institutions, including

7592-570: The road at will, fly about, then, as deftly as a bird, settle back into a place in traffic". The Dymaxion car was a vehicle designed by Fuller, featured prominently at Chicago's 1933-1934 Century of Progress World's Fair. During the Great Depression , Fuller formed the Dymaxion Corporation and built three prototypes with noted naval architect Starling Burgess and a team of 27 workmen — using donated money as well as

7696-472: The solution to his family's struggles on long walks around Chicago. During the autumn of 1927, Fuller contemplated suicide by drowning in Lake Michigan, so that his family could benefit from a life insurance payment. Fuller said that he had experienced a profound incident which would provide direction and purpose for his life. He felt as though he was suspended several feet above the ground enclosed in

7800-491: The spaces within it should not necessarily be absolutely defined, but rather perform a range of desired functions. As such, a room in a high-tech building could be used as a factory floor, a storage room, or a financial trading center all with minimal re-distribution of structural elements. The external services of a high-tech building, in this understanding of the style, exist solely to make the central space habitable and do not define its function. This can lead to an effect wherein

7904-442: The structural support elements visible from the outside, unlike many postmodern architecture buildings where most structural elements are hidden in the interior. The braced systems have strong exterior columns connected by "heavy" cross bracing elements. The diagrid system consists of a lattice of "light" diagonal elements and horizontal rings forming triangles, without vertical columns. High-tech architecture attempts to embody

8008-521: The suggestion of Yale art historian Vincent Scully , the pair travelled across America for a year to study architecture. In 1963, Foster returned to the UK and established his own architectural firm Team 4 , with Rogers, Su Brumwell , and the sisters Georgie and Wendy Cheesman . Among their first projects was the Cockpit, a minimalist glass bubble installed in Cornwall, the features of which became

8112-537: The summer of 1959, Fuller was recruited by longtime friend Harold Cohen to serve as a research professor of "design science exploration" at the institution's School of Art and Design. According to SIU architecture professor Jon Davey, the position was "unlike most faculty appointments ... more a celebrity role than a teaching job" in which Fuller offered few courses and was only stipulated to spend two months per year on campus. Nevertheless, his time in Carbondale

8216-538: The tensional members. For half of a century, Fuller developed many ideas, designs, and inventions, particularly regarding practical, inexpensive shelter and transportation. He documented his life, philosophy, and ideas scrupulously by a daily diary (later called the Dymaxion Chronofile ), and by twenty-eight publications. Fuller financed some of his experiments with inherited funds, sometimes augmented by funds invested by his collaborators, one example being

8320-581: The term "Dymaxion" is used in effect to signify a "radically strong and light tensegrity structure". One of Fuller's Dymaxion Houses is on display as a permanent exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan . Designed and developed during the mid-1940s, this prototype is a round structure (not a dome), shaped something like the flattened "bell" of certain jellyfish. It has several innovative features, including revolving dresser drawers, and

8424-493: The time the most expensive building ever constructed. The building is marked by its high level of light transparency, as all 3500 workers have a view to Victoria Peak or Victoria Harbour . Foster said that if the firm had not won the contract it would probably have been bankrupted. Foster was assigned the brief for a development on the site of the Baltic Exchange, which had been damaged beyond repair by an IRA bomb, in

8528-440: The tutelage of Arthur Penn , then a student at Black Mountain, Fuller broke through his inhibitions to become confident as a performer and speaker. At Black Mountain, with the support of a group of professors and students, he began reinventing a project that would make him famous: the geodesic dome . Although the geodesic dome had been created, built and awarded a German patent on June 19, 1925, by Dr. Walther Bauersfeld , Fuller

8632-490: The viewer. Often these spaces are placed in large service towers external to the building, as in the Lloyd's building in London by Richard Rogers . The Lloyd's building also has offices designed to be changed and configured as needed by the shifting and removal of partitions – creating a flexible and adaptable interior environment that can be changed to meet the needs of the building's occupants. This theme of reconfigurable spaces

8736-437: The walls of the terminal's east and west elevations clad in two sequences of traditionally mouth-blown, leaded glass. For complex technical and security reasons, the original scheme, which Clarke considered to be his magnum opus , couldn't be executed. Though unrealised, the collaboration is historically significant for its scale, its introduction of colour and materials broadly viewed as antithetical to high-tech architecture into

8840-535: The widely known geodesic dome ; carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres. He also served as the second World President of Mensa International from 1974 to 1983. Fuller was awarded 28 United States patents and many honorary doctorates. In 1960, he was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal from The Franklin Institute . He

8944-584: The world. He has also been on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation . Foster believes that attracting young talent is essential, and is proud that the average age of people working for Foster and Partners is 32, just like it was in 1967. In May 2022, it was announced that Foster would help plan reconstruction in Ukraine after the end of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine . Foster has been married three times. His first wife, Wendy Cheesman , one of

9048-673: The year of his death, Fuller described himself as follows: Guinea Pig B: I am now close to 88 and I am confident that the only thing important about me is that I am an average healthy human. I am also a living case history of a thoroughly documented, half-century, search-and-research project designed to discover what, if anything, an unknown, moneyless individual, with a dependent wife and newborn child, might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity that could not be accomplished by great nations, great religions or private enterprise, no matter how rich or powerfully armed. Fuller died on July 1, 1983, 11 days before his 88th birthday. During

9152-692: Was "extremely productive", and Fuller was promoted to university professor in 1968 and distinguished university professor in 1972. Working as a designer, scientist, developer, and writer, he continued to lecture for many years around the world. He collaborated at SIU with John McHale . In 1965, they inaugurated the World Design Science Decade (1965 to 1975) at the meeting of the International Union of Architects in Paris, which was, in Fuller's own words, devoted to "applying

9256-501: Was a Unitarian , and, like his grandfather Arthur Buckminster Fuller (brother of Margaret Fuller ), a Unitarian minister. Fuller was also an early environmental activist , aware of Earth's finite resources, and promoted a principle he termed " ephemeralization ", which, according to futurist and Fuller disciple Stewart Brand , was defined as "doing more with less". Resources and waste from crude, inefficient products could be recycled into making more valuable products, thus increasing

9360-410: Was a key theme of many structures designed in the high-tech style. The appropriate utilization and distribution of space is often an integral component of high-tech theory, and as such these ideals are often found in concert with practical concerns over habitability and practicality of design. At the core of many high-tech buildings is the concept of the "omniplatz". This is the idea that a building and

9464-531: Was a result of Fuller's exploration of nature's constructing principles to find design solutions. The Fuller Dome is referenced in the Hugo Award -winning novel Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner , in which a geodesic dome is said to cover the entire island of Manhattan , and it floats on air due to the hot-air balloon effect of the large air-mass under the dome (and perhaps its construction of lightweight materials). The Omni-Media-Transport: With such

9568-475: Was an American architect, systems theorist , writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist . He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as " Spaceship Earth ", " Dymaxion " (e.g., Dymaxion house , Dymaxion car , Dymaxion map ), " ephemeralization ", " synergetics ", and " tensegrity ". Fuller developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized

9672-464: Was awarded United States patents. Fuller's patent application made no mention of Bauersfeld's self-supporting dome built some 26 years prior. Although Fuller undoubtedly popularized this type of structure he is mistakenly given credit for its design. One of his early models was first constructed in 1945 at Bennington College in Vermont, where he lectured often. Although Bauersfeld's dome could support

9776-488: Was bullied by fellow pupils and took up reading. He considered himself quiet and awkward in his early years. At 16, he left school and passed an entrance exam for a trainee scheme set up by Manchester Town Hall , which led to his first job, an office junior and clerk in the treasurer's department. In 1953, Foster completed his national service in the Royal Air Force , choosing the air force because aircraft had been

9880-573: Was connected with the Fullers' damp and drafty living conditions. This provided motivation for Fuller's involvement in Stockade Building Systems , a business which aimed to provide affordable, efficient housing. In 1927, at age 32, Fuller lost his job as president of Stockade. The Fuller family had no savings, and the birth of their daughter Allegra in 1927 added to the financial challenges. Fuller drank heavily and reflected upon

9984-628: Was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) on 19 May 1983, and a Royal Academician (RA) on 26 June 1991. In 1995, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (HonFREng). On 24 April 2017, he was given the Freedom of the City of London . The Bloomberg London building received a Stirling Prize in October 2018. In 1986 he received an Honorary Doctorate from

10088-475: Was elected an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1967, on the occasion of the 50-year reunion of his Harvard class of 1917 (from which he had been expelled in his first year). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968. The same year, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member. He became a full Academician in 1970, and he received

10192-497: Was expelled from Harvard twice: first for spending all his money partying with a vaudeville troupe, and then, after having been readmitted, for his "irresponsibility and lack of interest." By his own appraisal, he was a non-conforming misfit in the fraternity environment. Between his sessions at Harvard, Fuller worked in Canada as a mechanic in a textile mill , and later as a laborer in the meat-packing industry . He also served in

10296-560: Was influenced by Alfred Korzybski 's idea of general semantics . In the 1950s, Fuller attended seminars and workshops organized by the Institute of General Semantics , and he delivered the annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1955. Korzybski is mentioned in the Introduction of his book Synergetics . The two shared a remarkable amount of similarity in their general semantics formulations. In his 1970 book, I Seem To Be

10400-400: Was lead designer, architect, and engineer for both companies. Richard Lewontin , a new faculty member in population genetics at North Carolina State University, provided Fuller with computer calculations for the lengths of the domes' edges. Fuller began working with architect Shoji Sadao in 1954, together designing a hypothetical Dome over Manhattan in 1960, and in 1964 they co-founded

10504-530: Was never particularly popular, and other high-tech designs were seen as uncomfortable or awkward to live in. High-tech architecture was most commonly employed in the construction of factories, corporate offices, or art galleries, all spaces that could effectively leverage the aesthetic of industry and find good use for the flexible spaces the style created. The application of technological themes throughout high-tech buildings intends to convey an ethos of science and progress. While transparency and honesty of materials

10608-432: Was steered via the third wheel at the rear, capable of 90° steering lock . Able to steer in a tight circle, the Dymaxion often caused a sensation, bringing nearby traffic to a halt. Shortly after launch, a prototype rolled over and crashed, killing the Dymaxion's driver and seriously injuring its passengers. Fuller blamed the accident on a second car that collided with the Dymaxion. Eyewitnesses reported, however, that

10712-549: Was that the strongest possible homogeneous truss is cyclically tetrahedral. He had become a guru of the design, architecture, and "alternative" communities, such as Drop City , the community of experimental artists to whom he awarded the 1966 "Dymaxion Award" for "poetically economic" domed living structures. Fuller was most famous for his lattice shell structures – geodesic domes , which have been used as parts of military radar stations, civic buildings, environmental protest camps, and exhibition attractions. An examination of

10816-548: Was the beginning of their lifelong friendship. Fuller taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina during the summers of 1948 and 1949, serving as its Summer Institute director in 1949. Fuller had been shy and withdrawn, but he was persuaded to participate in a theatrical performance of Erik Satie's Le piège de Méduse produced by John Cage , who was also teaching at Black Mountain. During rehearsals, under

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