
Posts tagged with "Norman Foster":


Human blood sculpture coming to New York City in a Norman Foster cage
Quinn is slated to begin gathering the blood this January by stationing small laboratories in cities across the world, all set up to match medical and ethical standards, according to The Guardian. Every person who donates blood will be able to contribute a short video message about their reasons for joining the effort. Refugees will have the opportunity to share their past traumas and bring attention to those still in crisis. Odyssey will go on tour around the world after its initial stint at the New York Public Library. The accompanying footage will be displayed across public screens and billboards throughout the host cities. In addition, the artwork will be displayed inside a steel-framed pavilion designed by Sir Norman Foster and backed by the Norman Foster Foundation. Foster noted the difficult yet poignant task of creating a traveling structure for this invaluable piece of art: “Art can raise issues of equality and inequality. That has to be one of the functions of art,” he said. “In Odyssey we had a challenge: to create an environment that will work with the two frozen cubes of blood and be able to adapt to radically different locations and climates. This challenge is primarily architectural but is also an environmental one. “In a way, perhaps that diversity of situations also highlights the diversity of the refugee crisis; it is not confined to one continent, nor to one kind of people. It’s universal—much like our humanity. We are all the same, under the skin.” Anyone can donate blood or money to the project. Visit bloodcube.org for more.I am giving my blood to Odyssey to help refugees. Join me by getting involved with @bloodcube_org, a major public artwork by @marcquinnart in collaboration with @theirc. My blood, your blood and refugee blood are the same. #ourblood pic.twitter.com/bUMJRVvczF
— Sting (@OfficialSting) October 23, 2018

Norman Foster and other leaders suspend participation in Saudi Arabian megacity

London dispatch: Bloomberg HQ should not have won this year's RIBA Stirling Prize

Foster + Partners will master plan the core of a new Indian state capital

Here are the six first-time national pavilions at the 2018 Venice Biennale

Foster + Partners reveals their Vatican Chapel for the Venice Architecture Biennale

Norman Foster’s Chicago Apple Store can’t handle this brutal winter

Robert A.M. Stern and Norman Foster talk Yale and martinis at the Glass House

A look inside Chicago's new Norman Foster-designed Apple flagship

Foster + Partners reveals first public landscape design for Norton Museum of Art

Norman Foster Foundation inaugurates new foundation with major forum in Madrid
From Michael Bloomberg to Olafur Eliasson, figures from the worlds of design, business, art, academia, and government all gathered in Madrid’s Teatro Real on June 1 to discuss nothing less than how to save the world, all under the auspices of the Norman Foster Foundation.
The forum was titled “Future is Now,” and the primary challenges discussed were climate change, rapid urbanization, failing infrastructure, and global inequality. In his opening remarks, Foster stated that the pressing needs of the built environment “are far too important to be left to one profession.” Over the next few hours, the diverse selection of panelists explained how each of their fields could make a contribution, whether it was flying drones that could lay bricks, or models for large-scale water-infrastructure management. (See The Architect's Newspaper's full coverage of the Forum here.) The day was a call to action—Alejandro Aravena said that “cities could become social ticking time bombs” and “shortcuts to inequality”—as well as an overarching manifesto and debut event for the Norman Foster Foundation, which is based in Madrid. The foundation features an archive of Foster’s sketches and models, educational programming, an in-house architectural team, and a design and technology office that will conduct research into advanced materials like carbon fiber. The Foundation is totally independent from Foster’s firm, Foster and Partners, and has a mandate to tackle the loftier challenges outlined at the forum. It will also helm its own architectural projects, such the Droneport that debuted at the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture and is slated for a town in Rwanda. The facility, a series of spaces encased by brick domes, aims to be a vital hub of trade and supply for remote settlements. If successful, it could serve as a prototype for similar projects across the continent.
The Foundation itself occupies a stately 1902 residence about a mile north of the Museo del Prado and Madrid’s city center. While almost all its programs are housed in the historic building, the Foundation also designed what it calls a “Pavilion of Inspirations,” a large glass-and-steel gallery that holds a collection of objects and artworks that inspire Foster—including Le Corbusier’s 1926 Avion Voisin Lumineuse car, a futurist sculpture by Umberto Boccioni, dozens of airplane and automobile models, and two designs by Buckminster Fuller, who was Foster’s mentor and collaborator.
If there were one architect who’s ideological influence loomed largest at the forum, it was Fuller, with his globe-spanning, innovation-focused view of humanity’s shared challenges. There were strong currents of techno-utopianism on some panels, and there were moments when it seemed that advanced drones and computers would supplant conventional architects in the near future. Still, with his foundation preserving and digitizing his sketches and models, Foster is betting that future generations will benefit from this study of his analog design process. When speaking to The Architect's Newspaper, Foster said he was excited by the promises of technology, but explained, “Basically, the computer is just another tool. And don’t fool yourself because of its ultra-sophistication and its artificial intelligence that it’s actually the brain.… I would defend that to the death.”