Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank

Norman Foster (born 1935) is an English architect.

Foster was born in Manchester and educated at the University of Manchester and at Yale University. He worked for the visionary Buckminster Fuller before meeting with Richard Rogers, creating Team 4 and in 1967 Foster Associates.

His designs were originally a stylish, machine influenced high-tech but he has moved away from this to a blander, more acceptable sharp edged modernity.

He has had a extremely successful career including the Commerzbank in Frankfurt, the HSBC tower and the Chek Lap Kok airport in Hong Kong, Stansted Airport, the metro of Bilbao, Spain, the redevelopment of the Great Court of the British Museum (1999), the Greater London Authority HQ (2000), the "erotic gerkhin" of the proposed Swiss Re Headquarters in London, the wobbly Millennium Bridge in London (1999) and the controversial Reichstag redevelopment in Berlin (1999).

He was knighted in 1990 and made a lord in 1999.