YouSaid · the spoken record

Norman Foster

lines on the record: 42
first: 2026-05-23
most recent: 2026-05-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I can't help it. But I would like to take you to a little building in Manchester Corn Maggies, which is a cancer research station. I'd like to take you to a small chapel, which is the tiniest building that we've done on an island in Venice. And each in these different ways, particularly the magis, or some of the hospital health work that we've done, is in its impact really, really significant. But it's not necessarily newsworthy because it doesn't happen to be pace the model behind us. The biggest of its kind at that time, or the highest of its kind, or if it's Mio Viaduct. So in many ways what is newsworthy is not necessarily what is the most important of its time.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Capturing the cool air at a height above and funneling it through wind towers and so on, applying all of those lessons and then the technology of our age, so able to demonstrate that we can have the living qualities that we take for granted but solar powered in a very, very hostile environment. So that is learning from an architecture without architects. Obviously those architects were there. They didn't have a name. It was more anonymous. If you fast forward, yes, names are known. I think your star architect really inevitably some architects do the kinds of buildings that attract attention. But also, if I take... You're looking at me when you're using that word.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm often invoking buildings from the past. For the importance not just in terms of nostalgia, but for the lessons that we can learn from them. So if I take the solar powered community of an educational institute like Mazdar, which is totally solar powered in the desert, that was only made possible by applying the lessons from an architecture of the past which didn't have access to instant electrical energy to power air conditioning. So it was about scaling streets for people and not cars, creating shadow orientation. It was about evaporative cooling, which meant bringing in vegetation. It was about colonnades for shade. It was about layering a building. It was about catching.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So That is going to make it even more important for those who use all the advantages of artificial intelligence, but are not inhibitedly dependent on it. Maybe it's a bit like going into the home of Steve Jobs and finding a rare book on a pedestal, the rare book becomes even more valuable in the digital age.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is the accumulation of everything that has gone before, then some of the most interesting things that we've done architecturally have not gone before. So the points that I was making about creating a tower without a central core and taking that central core, artificial intelligence is not going to tell you about that. It's going to tell you everything that it knows about central core buildings. It's backward-looking.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could argue an opposite point, that if you could do more with less, if you had the enhancement of such a tool. But if I go back to square one, AI is not something that happened yesterday. It's been evolving gradually over time, gaining momentum, gaining awareness in the same way that the whole issue of sustainability. Sustainability was at the core of the practice when it emerged in the 1960s. You could argue the rest of the world has finally caught up with that. But many of the things that we were doing back then were fringe activity. Now they're mainstream. They're in everybody's front page headline. And if artificial intelligence”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the hospital was most likely a converted other kind of building. Airports didn't exist. Railway stations didn't exist. So the whole building spectrum has grown, but in many ways the importance of the architect is an integral part of that. And a decisive part because design determines so much of the outcome, the cost of a building, the performance of a building, how much it meets the needs of the public at large or everything we've been talking about, that is underappreciated. It's undervalued and it's underpaid. Those of us who are able, we try to do what we can to change that. But you're needing really to bring in the profession at an earlier stage of decision making.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you're absolutely right. I think that it's rooted in the birth of the profession, which was always an aristocratic element. It was always a kind of gentleman's pursuit. And that may have been appropriate at a point where architecture was a very, very tiny slice of the buildings that society needed. So it was your cathedrals, it was your maybe your town halls. But the whole...”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You think is this ever going to turn into something that can be habitable? It's muddy boots. And part of the practice we were talking about, or indeed anything, whether it's here in the foundation doing a project, whether it's in the practice, you get on the building site, you get the hard hat on, you get into the factories, you engage with those. This is not fashionable. This is not necessarily taught Yale School of Architecture, an exception. And there is a nobility in making, and there should be in the same way, you know, that those who protect us, those who keep us healthy, they should have a much higher standing in society.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They actually build it. I mean, obviously they have supervision from skilled builders. And then it's handed over and a family lives in it. And they see the success or otherwise of their endeavors, which is absolutely fantastic. And one of the reasons why, and here, you know that I'm a graduate of Yale, so I'm a Yale alumni, so I have a certain, but the point that I was going to make was that My daughter called me and said, I just started work on the building. I'm on a building site. And she said, you know what? For the first time, I really appreciate manual workers. I know what it is. And it's that the making of something. I mean, when you go on a building site,”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had, and this is not a criticism of one particular party or one individual, but Margaret Thatcher, who did a whole number of positive things, one of the negative things was to dismember the industrial base of the United Kingdom. And not surprisingly, perhaps, then the status of those who make accordingly suffered. I think that the rather complex answer to your question is that some societies encourage and enable. It's interesting. I mean, my daughter is just graduating from Yale in architecture. And one of the great things about Yale School of Architecture is unlike, I think, any school that I know, in the first year they make a building. Design a building and then they make it.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The same priorities. And I think that that's perhaps an extreme example of the fact that some societies, the Status is associated with the ability to make of craft. Switzerland has that. So in Switzerland, the cabinet maker, those who make, have that standing in society. If I go to the United Kingdom on a building site, It's probably likely to be publicly speaking. Why poli speaking? Because those craft skills are still alive and well in Poland and they've been exported. And we talked earlier about that time in 1951 when I was 16. And was I 16 in... In the period between now and then”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And as you know, the thesis behind that book is that China hierarchically is run by engineers. They're about doing things, and America is run by lawyers, and they don't have necessarily.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A big picture person, which we know and we take for granted, lesser so perhaps Mike's ability to challenge a lifting consultant about the elevators and so on. And I have to say that's fantastic. I mean, the most interesting individuals to work with are those who challenged. There's no question. And the more that you do have that ability to challenge each other in the process, then arguably the better the end result.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't think it was because I don't think that ever came into it. Steve had the ability to be able to be on his hands and knees worrying about the detail of a plug and a socket. And at the same time be sensitive to the big picture. And I think that there are relatively few people that you come in contact who have that appreciation of the importance of scale. Mike Bloomberg, by the way, and I'm not just saying that, is another individual who has in any conversation will challenge a tiny detail or like the idea of having a wooden floor and then all kinds of things follow from that. But obviously...”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cost is always a factor. But the important thing is also, and it's overlooked, it's not just the cost of how much it costs to buy that building, how much does it cost to run. And then over the lifetime of that project, the decision to spend that amount of money on that kind of building or another kind of building. For example, how do you put a price on the ability of the Hong Kong bank to be able to introduce that dealer's flaw? Or for Willie Sweber, not to have to build another building because they can incorporate the new digital technology. How do you put a price on that? And how do you put a price on a building which significantly improves productivity? Because in the longer scheme of things, the first cost of a building is a relatively small proportion of the bigger financial picture.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We know what happens with whoever comes along and their pot is fixed. What if they don't know Then I think you have the importance of simulating, of modeling and saying, if you go in this direction, then it's going to cost you that. If you go in this direction, it's going to cost you that. And in many ways, again, if I try and find a simple analogy, if you take a car, the base cost of that car, in many cases, is relatively low. The cost of driving it out of the showroom, depending on the extras that you have either agreed or bought into, is going to change the cost of driving that car out of the showroom. And in many cases, that is obviously true of a building. So it's part of the creative process to actually define that budget. But notwithstanding illusions, the reality is that”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not how much you spend, it's how wisely you spend it. So that is philosophical. But it's tangible in terms of the end results. So you may have somebody who says, that's it, this is my resource. And there are three resources. And one is the most valuable. So you have money. You have time because time is also money. The longer you spend on your project, most likely, the lower you're actually going to get. So in many ways, when you can do something faster within reasonable limits, then you're maximizing. Often if you have a fixed amount of time and you draw that out and draw it out, the money is losing over that. But the third resource is creative energy. And that is far and away the most valuable because that's going to determine what you get for your money.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no absolute way around this. I mean, it may be that the budget is absolutely fixed. We have that amount of money. How can we optimize? How can we maximize the value? First of all, there is not the relationship that you would expect between quality and how much you spend on a building. There are so many buildings I could point to where a fortune's been spent and you just wouldn't want to go near that building. We need the whole list. There are buildings where they're noble buildings and they were built on very, very tight budget. So quality is an attitude of mine.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Literally, when the next administration came down for whatever reason, I would surmise that it was seen as a threat. So it was demolished. The only element which is still standing on the south bank, and you know there is the Festival Hall, of course, but that was part of that creation.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A semi detached. So this was an extraordinary era. Now, since then for a whole variety of reasons, many of them political, it's no longer the leading at that level of innovation, manufacturing and so on. factors are quite complex, some of them are political and others social. So you do have this cyclical and you can look at the rise and fall of empires and the relationship between the way in which that might be celebrated either through the technology or the architecture of the time. And the architecture of the festival of Britain at that time was absolutely extraordinary. And that was the achievement of one administration, but”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reasons, interestingly. So they were in awe, and the images, I mean, are extraordinary. So 1951, was it more or less hard on the heels of World War II? And Britain was in true austerity mode. You still had rationing. So you had a little book, and when you went to buy food or clothes, then you could only buy depending on the number of coupons like postage stamps that you'd got left. But that period was the first nuclear power station, was the first commercial jet. It was the De Havilland Comet, was in terms of cars created the R-type Bentley, 120 miles an hour, hour on hour. It cost twice two houses at that time.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting. I'm working on a project right now. So I'm with a team of relatively young architects. And so I'm saying, well, in terms of domes, of course, it would be interesting to make a comparison with a particular dome in the Festival of Britain 1951. And everybody looked at me quizly. And I said, but you never heard of it because nobody ever heard of it. So I said, well, check it out. And the next meeting will talk about it. The next meeting, they came back and said, why didn't we know about that? This was 1951. It was the biggest dome in the world. It was demolished for political reasons.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the same time, I drew a parallel with Terminal 5, which I think took 20 years, and was a fraction of the size, and is really a sort of band-aid on top of Heathrow, which is still embedded in the heart of you overfly metropolis together. So there are a lot of messages perhaps mixed up in these analogies and comparisons.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started work at the age of 16 in Manchester Town Hall, which was the ultimate statement of civic pride. And it was a competition. And Waterhouse won that competition. That was my first experience of architecture. It took me a little longer to eventually discover that I could study architecture, so I was a late starter at the age of 21. But I can remember vividly right now details of that building. I mean, that really lifted my spirit. So whether it was the great train stations, and of course, today it's the great airports. So if you really want to see the most advanced airports in the world, where do you go? I mean, it's obvious, we know where you go.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Struggle with big infrastructure because at every stage in the emergence of a nation, whether that is the United Kingdom, in its empire days, the Industrial Revolution, it led the world. We're still trading right now on that. I mean, the Thames Embankment was a response to cholera. It created If you like systems thinking and doing more with less, it also introduced below ground high-speed public transport. It cleaned up the Thames. So that period, you had the expression of that civic pride. I started...”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This 97% of Chinese cities on a pig day 13 million travelers achieved in 16 years. And in the UK, they gave up on the London to Manchester. It goes as far as Birmingham, short-termism. They have a department for leveling up. The ultimate leveling up is connectivity. They just didn't get it. And that 54,000 kilometers is more than the rest of the world put together by a huge margin.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if I say China more specifically, over the last 30 years, I mean, the changes that I've seen, which interestingly I was communicating earlier this week to the Bloomberg event audience here and sharing that experience with them and showing them the China when I first went there and it's foggy, it's misty you can't see the 90% of the vehicles, electric, an extraordinary amount of green, I mean Shanghai is 50%, Beijing, 50% green. That's happened over the last few decades. And in terms of connectivity, just over 54,000 kilometers of high-speed train. 220 miles an hour, 350 kilometers an hour, connecting”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Big open loft things. Nobody anticipated that in the life of that building, the early life, there would be something known as a trading floor where you need clear line of sight. That wasn't a need in the late 1970s when the competition for that building. But it was able to absorb that. So I think that the whole thing about the future is that by design you can, if I say that you create a building for the needs of today with an awareness of the past, but to, as far as you're able to anticipate a future which is largely unknown. But perhaps in terms of infrastructure, having been backwards and forwards to Asia,”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But in no time at all after it opened, it opened with typewriters. And in no time, that building, and it was the only building in the insurance industry, which was as a headquarters able to adapt, it adapted to the digital revolution, to screens. And the same was true of the Hong Kong Bank. The Hong Kong bank, which I also recently went to their 40th anniversary, as opposed to Willie's favor and their 50th anniversary. So literally a few weeks ago I was there at that celebration. And the same thing there, that building, quite radical at the time and still in many ways radical, took the traditional central core of a tower which contained the structure, the vertical circulation, the bathrooms, mechanical plant, took all that fragmented it, put it at the sides of”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To any building anywhere is how do you anticipate the future? So if I go back to an early building which recently celebrated its half century and that was the Willis Faber building in Ipswich, an insurance headquarters. And in the life of that building, that building had a high degree of flexibility. And nobody in their wildest dreams anticipated that that flexibility would be used.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I mean, I took the example of the building in China. That same need could be anywhere. It just happened to be in China. So you could have in China exactly the same requirement as a building like JPMorgan or Bloomberg, although, of course, no two buildings are alike. I mean, each is specific to its own organization, the values of those organizations, the aspirations of those who've created them, whether they're an individual like Mike Bloomberg in Bloomberg, whether it's Steve Jobs with Apple, or whether it's much more corporate, more anonymous, but nonetheless, there are those values. I would say that common...”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beijing. If I talk about a building there, the company ethos is totally different. It's about competition between groups. So it's the polar opposite. And I could describe that in detail. The point that I'm making is that as I take you through these decisions, the way that they overlap and interact, you start to realize that the process of design is about balancing, it's about reconciling, it's about creating something which is simultaneously working in the public domain, working for a visitor, working for those inside when they come outside.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're thinking simultaneously of how that building works from the inside out. And you're also thinking simultaneously from the outside in because arguably they're two completely separate groups of people. Private inside, public outside. But the building is in the public domain. So if I took the headquarters of Bloomberg, then an early decision was to intercept Also in the high-tech business. So if I go to”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The point is then that the two separate systems of the shell and the chassis have merged into one element which is doing both jobs better. So it's doing more with less. Now, imagine that we're talking about the exterior of a building, heating and cooling it. If you think of integrated design, then you're going to end up, if all those skills are working together, you can really do a system approach to design. You can start to get things doing double duty, performing more, less components, higher performance, more quality, and better quality of life. So that principle, whether it's in a city or a building, is all of that is to a social end.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which was a shell to enclose and protect the occupants from the rain, the elements from nature. And then at one point a car emerged. It was the Chrysler airflow. And the body became not just the shell, it became an integral part of the structure. So the car was lighter, and the car was immensely stronger. The promotional video of that time, they pushed the car off the top of the mountain, and it kind of rolled and rolled and landed Four Square. Somebody comes out of the bushes, demonstrates that, opens the door, gets in, and drives away.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it would have been absolutely traditional, we could adjust collectively designed that building and then just passed it on. But there would be so many lost opportunities because if you think of a building as an integration of systems, I mean, if I tried to bring this back to the world of automotive design and I found myself trying to communicate that, this principle to a group of automotive engineers, not just the engineers, but those who are making the cars. And the example that I took was a point in time in the 1930s when pretty well all of the cars, any production car, followed a certain pattern. It was a chassis and then a body On top of that.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Literally this morning I was sitting around a table with a group of us as architects here in the foundation on a project alongside the individual who would be going to build that building and we're saying well the next stage is to do this we really have to have the environmental engineer. We have to have this structural engineer and that will be the next meeting. So that was the first meeting. Now we were able to go so far but only so far. And we recognize the need to have those other skills on board. Now we could have”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love flight, I love automobiles. And I think that as designers, we get our inspirations from many different directions. I was deliberately being tongue-in-cheek in terms of the jumbo jet. But what I really wanted to do was to get the audience thinking in a different way about a jumbo because when you think about it, It's a restaurant, it's a cinema, it's a hotel, and all the while it's moving from one place to the other. And also to start to think about the miracle of flight. I mean, they're still an extraordinary magic that these machines, which are weighing tons, can somehow by lumbering along the runway suddenly levitate and then transporters vast distances. And I think there are also a lot of lessons in terms of the built world. In other words, how can we use harness technology to improve the quality of life?”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Needs a process of re-education because engineers have been taught. Show me what you want, I'll make it Architects have been taught that they should design in isolation. It goes further. Architects are taught about doing a building in isolation. A city outside is a street. You could argue the street is the essence of the traditional city. Architects and urbanism. Not talked about designing streets. So planners are taught in terms of zoning.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the more that you know about the issues around any assignment, the more you're empowered as a designer. So that has led me over decades to promote a particular way of designing, which is counterintuitive. It's against everything that we're taught in a school of architecture or engineering. And that is you bring all the disciplines together. A table and you work from the outset together. Now, a critic of that will say that sounds like a committee architect. It's not. I mean, basically, the team is going to be involved in that project. So if the architect designs and then hands it over to the engineer to make it stand up, to make it hot when it's cold outside in the reverse, you lose the opportunity of the feedback. If you get that at the outset, the designers are more empowered and the designers are really a wider team. But”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's totally rooted in the process of design. So you cannot separate. Design is really a response to constraints and whether those constraints come from the codes, whether they come from the requirements for the building, because a building is a response to a need. It then takes on more layers, yes. It's in the public domain. But it's shaped by constraints, by needs. It's a response. So if you don't have those constraints, if you don't have those demands, if you don't have to meet certain requirements, performance, some of those are tangible. You can measure them. Some are less obvious, subconscious, perhaps. Below the surface. Nonetheless, so it's a design, is a response to needs.”
2026-05-23 · Odd Lots · Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source