Charlie Rose, Norman Foster, August 2017

Lord Norman Foster is here architecture critic Paul Goldberger once called him the Mozart of modernism over the course of a six decade career he has become one of the world's most revered and prolific architects his iconic structures include the Gherkin building London City Hall and the HSBC building in Hong Kong in 2009 Steve Jobs of Apple chose Foster and his firm to design the new Apple headquarters which opened in April also reached and launched the Norman Foster foundation in Madrid it promotes interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects and designers anticipate the future I am pleased to have Norman Foster back at this table welcome thank you tell me about you've been doing you've done some buildings I mean some had done some designing for Steve Jobs with respect to some of the stores before you began to think of oh that's come later that came later no the the the the campus the main building Steve's vision for the future that was the start how did the two of you come together Norman Foster Steve Jobs he called me out of the blue directly and said hi Norman I need some help can you come over how quickly can you get here yes and I was there a few weeks later and what was going to be an hour's meeting two hours meeting just took over the whole day so from the beginning to the end finished in the kitchen of the pizza with families it was total immersion immersion in white in really Steve's vision for his project and he described the materials stone and glass the California landscape of his youth and together we talked about that he talked about the citrus groves the fruit bowl of his youth I suggested that maybe those could be incorporated into a landscape he loved the idea and then we went to Pixar which in many kind of ways was different but was relevant to the conversation so it was a very intensive and if I do a word picture of the conversation of that day you can relate it very directly to the building as it is now he even talked about a theater for a thousand people where he could make presentations and all that stuff on an annual basis what did you make of him I thought that he was remarkable in that he was could think about the big picture and beyond his hands and knees worrying about the detail of a socket and a plug so that ability which I admire I married in an architect in any great thinker strategist that ability to for the headlines and the fine print you know people who know him well say that he married almost uniquely part in technology I'd say that was a pretty good description he was in a way totally about the future focused surely after he passed away I had to present the scheme to the top 100 in Apple and my opening image was a quote from Steve don't think of me as the client think of me as a member of the team and he was creative and and then we now have what's called the circle or the ring I'm sorry the ring did he talk about that idea of the ring no what is kind of below the sashes was the way in which the project evolved the circle came relatively late in the process and the circle emerged out of a dialogue between his perfect vision for something called the pod which was essentially a team space with monastic like cells on the side so that the individual could have a degree of concentration that there will be the commonality of the other team space that had certain dimensional constraints and then there was the big picture of the building in the landscape and it started off like his vision of Stanford with its social space it started with a with the heart as a landscape space it kind of became rectangle squares then we moved into circles then there was something called the propeller scheme and at one point there was this crisis we could not reconcile the ideal interior with the ideal exterior and then kind of click the circle came and it was you know it was one of those Eureka moments but he came out of a long process it wasn't an immediate one-liner he wanted to eliminate the barrier between building in nature that was really I think part of that vision from from the start so and when he had the opportunity to get the joining side then all of a sudden 175 acres offer yourself as a prospect I mean ten thousand trees five miles of track and something that will be shared by not just the people in the main building but all the other the team of Apple in the in the neighborhood I want to show some photographs and you will recognize them tell me what I'm seeing there ah that is the the 1000 seat presentation theater and it is a disc a carbon fiber disc floating without visible structure the glass drum is the the structure so structural glass and everything kind of hidden in those joints so really doing more with less next slide these are the eyebrows the canopies they're extending the interior space out into the landscape you can see they're highly reflective so the that green landscape is being mirrored into into the space above they're acting as light shelves four main areas of the facade shading reducing glare but giving a kind of unique identity to this building where did the glass come from the glass came from a variety I mean it was processed they came from Germany China three buildings were created for this project and the new ingre industry arose in California in Sacramento so why only four stories ease of communication walk up you want to tell you walk around and see each other yes the building is about communication it's described as a very large building but I call it a compact building because if you think of the original campus 26 buildings you dissolve them into one everybody is under one roof this is great for creativity for communication and you can link vertically and horizontally so it's a very friendly building one of the last public appearances emai was before the Cupertino City Council yes to make the case for the building and he made it coming so elegantly so eloquently what's your best memory of him best memory of him is of somebody who was intense dedicated focused sense of humor a very warm a very human personally what does he share with Michael Bloomberg who you've just done a building for in the process of doing a building in London individuals very different buildings very different you couldn't be more far away from California than in the heart of the financial square mile of the city of the City of London but two individuals totally hand-on I mean so many individuals in that position would be delegating down to project managers and to individuals wonderfully opinionated in terms of the way that their organisation should work and prepared to make the effort and and to be demanding do you want to client or two to tell you exact what they want or do you want them simply to outline it so that you can give it the the structure that it gives you the freedom to come back you the the more information you can have the more you can respond to the very special needs of that organization through that individual so so really you want somebody who has strong views but has an open mind and you can play a kind of intellectual ping-pong you can show ideas they can be rejected absorbed transformed but out of that process comes something that is very tailored to that organization but ideally also has within it flexibility for change I've said this a thousand times Mike Nichols once said Mike Nichols a film director I'm asking what he expected from actors he said I expect the same thing from actors that I expect from my harka tech I want them to surprise me absolutely and I think that in that sense when that relationship is really working on a one to one and you have teams and that becomes kind of one team then the element of surprise is what was the vision of Michael Bloomberg for his parthis tower in the part of London he described it as fitting in and that was obviously the way in which the building would appear from the outside I think that the building is radical in the way that it breathes it's naturally ventilated also like Apple in that respect and they're both deep building so this is really pioneering but Mike's building remember is on very busy noisy polluted streets so to pull the air through that building to filter it to reduce the noise level that's really quite a challenge and using traditional materials that building really does fit in and Mike I mean you had the potential of going much higher so it's low in the cityscape I mean it really but at the same time it's giving a lot back to the community it's creating an arcade a public route the main group from the metro station on the line of the historic wash Ling Street so it's referring to history but this building was on top of of the site had beneath it Roman ruins with an incredible treasure trove I mean thousands of pieces of leather gold tablets extraordinary collection and it kind of encloses a Roman temple the temple of mithras and a metro station below it as well as shops and retrofit this building in with the surrounding building really knitting it in learning from history continuing the line of streets working with history but at the same time a similar parallel to the Apple building the building was also driven by how Bloomberg works which is a unique organization in so many ways so big floor plates good communication the ability to look across a space and see somebody yeah I think you said or Mike said or Bari has been said about both of you that an author should not be about work alone it should be about lifestyle and heart and other thing I've been pioneering that for as long as I can remember ever since I was an office boy a long time because you believe officers should not be a place where you go in and close the door don't speak there about lifestyle and remember that as the catchment becomes more and more difficult people are going where the good lifestyle is where and a healthy building so these are they were subjective beliefs perhaps decades ago but scientific research has shown that the environment within a building he can make you healthier can make morality can make you more productive what other architects in the world of star architects and people who have large names like you do who reflects you think closest you're abused about architecture and about design I think for me the the the people from the past like Buckminster Fuller I mean as as an individual arguably the first green architect the first person to draw attention to the fragility of the planet which happened about the same time as the space race when you were getting the first photograph of planet Earth which of course Bucky coined so I think and and in a way individuals like aim real ovens with his Rocky Mountain Institute in the 80s was demonstrating sustainability it's house you know high in Colorado above the snow line with banana trees and no energy input and beautifully comfortable with the changing demands of how we how we get energy does that present changing demands for architects I think it presents extraordinary opportunities I mean the way in which we're seeing the price of solar I mean here the optimists are in the ascendancy I mean predicted by 2030 will be cheaper than coal and you're seeing those economies which have a high dependence on fossil fuels you know realizing that and and China is investing heavily not just in solar two-thirds of the solar panels in the world come out of China half the wind turbines and the biggest investment people worry about that they'll be so far ahead of us in the technology but look at me look at the investment or the energy sources yes look at the investment in in battery plants you have to in America one in Europe you have ten in China either under construction or or operating but how does this change the architecture well we know I mean there's a solar prize in my name in Switzerland and one recent Prize winner generates two hundred and thirty eight percent of the energy that it needs so it's feeding back energy into the National Grid Upland said gently I mean is is absorbing more carbon dioxide through those trees two hundred tons a year and it's carbon neutral as a building it's totally energy sufficient if so many projects around the world how do you do it I I'm able to focus myself on a number of projects I'm able to overview a wider range of projects and I have just a fantastic team you once said though that architects have no power only the power of advocacy the power to be able to use rational argument and to confront the options and to point the way the small difference is small small interventions can make a huge difference you also said though that there are a lot of fantasies about Architects what fantasies are there I think that we had this event in Madrid and it was a multidisciplinary lineup in the spirit of the foundation it was created by by the foundation and somebody came up to me afterwards and said no it's from if this forum succeeded with something like 1500 students from various professions in making everybody realize that architecture is not just about making fancy shapes but it's really a core activity the design is a core activity it's not about frivolities it's really about so is it fine art its art it's also about practicality it's about responding to the issues so that there's a great balance in it between us Steve was talking about technology and it's a balancing act but it should lift the spirits it should make you feel it's not just about keeping out the rain the functionality role is not alone it should touch your spirit in a sense that you walk in a building that is then thought through and you feel a sense of you should too you should want to come back you should want to stay of course I think there's a wider world of shelter remember that one one in three of the urban settlements by 2050 will be so-called informal settlement which is a very kind of posh way of saying it won't have clean water it wouldn't have sent sanitation it won't have power so in a way the design community needs to join with those I think to address those needs you have been signal out for I think the words they used or lightness and grace does that mean something to you I'd be enormous ly flattered I mean I think that the best architecture for me is about light and lightness it doesn't mean to say that I don't enjoy those buildings which are more solid but if you go back in time to the cathedrals they were in pursuit of light and lightness even though they were made of heavy stones they stretch the boundaries and also the exploration of weight is an interesting idea yes the the concept of doing more with less and arguably that's what we have to do with cities we have to achieve more with less energy unless pollution and what's the relationship between architects and urban planning for me there's a total fusion I can't separate the individual building from the kind of urban glue the public spaces the bridges the mass transit our experience of a city transcends the individual building and it's the combination of the buildings the infrastructure that's where the energy is consumed that's where the greenhouse gases are being emitted so we have to make that cleaner the production of energy has to be clear do you stay informed by trying to prepare myself for events like the one last week image but I I think it's a curiosity and and in that sense I'm as much a student as I was when I was at Manchester however many decades ago so speaking of Manchester I mean everybody heart went out when they got up and realized what had happened there do you return to Manchester have you stayed close toward the city I go back the last time I went back I gave a talk in Manchester Town Hall which is where I worked as a youth and and I talked about the so-called northern powerhouse and I sought to elaborate ways in which through communication you could spread prosperity how it could have greater connectivity with the south and and the way in which the Pennine was a barrier and you could do a route around it I invoked the work that we've done in Bilbao and in the raw raw valley so yes I do go back but you came from as I understand middle-class family background I think it was more a working-class backward but I was I had fantastic parents and did you set out to become an architect was that an early inspiration I'd always been interested in buildings I mean when I worked at Manchester Town Hall I would walk around at the lunchtime and I would look at buildings and I was but it was only later that I realised that possibility of going to university to study architecture but it's the buildings it didn't it was it was yes it was interesting also that in the archive I didn't realize it was there but somebody who'd been going through it said did you see the book that you did when you were 13 years old and there's a description of curtain walls a night for dropping it completely so it's been it's been an obsession building since childhood and what is it that between you and grey the color grey I'm not at all sure that it's there's a theme of Gray's and Silver's and whites that weed their way through the buildings but there are also those buildings which have colors of nature I mean Willis favored for example is about the sunshine of yellow the green of grass so I think that in the same way you can categorize the buildings as skin and bones if you take the Bloomberg building it's very muscular which is very much expresses its structure in stone picks up the rhythms of the of the street Apple on the other hand is very much an expression of the skin of the building so I think that there are these themes which weave through the the architecture which brings me to the foundation that's in Madrid what's the driving idea about this foundation as you summarized at the beginning it's about younger generations it's about you - yes looking to the future as a student I was fortunate to to win scholarships I had a Henry fellowship that took me to to Yale University I was able during the summer vacation to win scholarships to travel and and when I won the Pritzker Prize the prize money went into a kitty and that was really the start or somehow also trying to give something back but with a focus I mean creating traveling fellowships enabling students who don't have the means the Bartlett school for example to have their tuition paid for the course but really with with more of a focus focus on on the things that in the way I've accumulated over those six and a half decades which produces an archive thing tange a base for people to come together and and events such as the one that you talked about in in Madrid so pointing the way for younger generations who will be have the responsibility for those those issues as big issues as you know I mean New York has often been a venue for a lot of conversations about the future of architecture and and yet I'm reading about your foundation part of what you want there is to capture the heartbeat of architecture and how it can serve the future yes and architecture and infrastructure and agriculture and transportation I mean we're on the edge of revolutions I mean the the car as we know it today will probably be totally obsolete by 2030 and will you be taking their arrows well or will you be taking the hovercraft will you be taking a drone where they've got ready to test in California a flying automobile so I mean what was science fiction in my youth is now the edge of reality and architecture is more now identified in terms of a kind of a holistic idea with with the larger forces at work I've always been pursuing a holistic view I mean in the 1960s and 70s green planning green buildings buildings that breathe now we're realizing them that was a green architecture before that the word had been coined when you travel around the world I mean it seems to me that as I follow what is being discussed in forums and conferences and things like that I mean urbanism is getting a very and more and more people are drawn to urban life in urban areas whether it's China as a developing country or whether it's places like you know Paris and London a sense of both the quality of life and urban areas the future society is in is the city I mean by 2050 it's estimated the 75% of humanity will be living in in cities and and if we're talking about global warming remember that 70% of the world cities are on the coast and 50% of humanity or is within 100 kilometers of the coast and put some at risk absolutely yes I mean it's not just the polar bear sitting on an iceberg when when you when you talk to young architects what is it they what are they different today than they were when you were 30 I think that they're possibly more concerned about about that we thought the world around yet is an awareness about it that there's a heightened sense of awareness and I think that that was the the power of the forum last week to draw students from really all over yes it's a friend who looked down that the long lines of students waiting to get in and this friend said you know why they're here it's about the future and they're worried about their future so I think you're right I think there is that even here among non architecture students among Millennials there is a great sense that we see in terms of mourning to have a more direct connection to the politics of their time I think the important thing though to get across is is bringing together different disciplines working together from the outset and a homeless listener propose the problems and that that's critical and that's one of the the main missions of the foundation your young at heart thank you for coming thank you

Channel: Foster and Partners

Views: 16,443

Rating: 4.9145298 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Ql1xb_xSNro

Length: 27min 46sec (1666 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 20 2018