Book Description

- Featuring photography of every completed work from the practice's first fifty years - from Reliance Controls in 1967 to Comcast in 2017 - Foster + Partners Portfolio is the only comprehensive book on the complete work of the renowned practice ever published - Foster + Partners Portfolio features previously unpublished photography and drawings of some of the practice's most significant built and unbuilt work - Features Foster + Partners' recent work, including the European headquarters of Bloomberg in London - winner of the 2018 RIBA Stirling Prize - The book opens with a foreword from Norman Foster - the Pritzker Prize-winning founder and executive chairman of Foster + Partners - Essays from respected writer, curator and consultant Peter Buchanan offer fresh insight into the practice and its exacting standards of design, sustainability, innovation and excellence - Foster + Partners Portfolio is the first in a new line of publications produced directly by the award-winning practice Foster + Partners Portfolio is a complete and extraordinary account of the first fifty years of Foster + Partners - a globally renowned studio for sustainable architecture, urbanism and design. Over the past half-century, the practice - founded as Foster Associates in 1967 - has grown into a multi-disciplinary studio, motivated by sustainable design and leading through creativity and innovation. This book provides a beautiful visual record that celebrates the practice's remarkable breadth of works - both built and unbuilt. For the first time ever, Portfolio features photography of every project completed in the practice's first five decades, as well as drawings of its most important unrealized designs. Through over 480 carefully edited images - many previously unpublished - the book highlights the enormous contribution the practice has made to a range of design disciplines. Portfolio is delineated into five decade-long chapters, spanning from 1967 to 2017. Photographic pairings, acting as a chronological record of over 340 built works, provide the book's visual narrative. Drawings of unbuilt works appear at the end of each decade, celebrating the people behind the projects and hinting at the depth of ideas that permeate the practice. By placing projects side-by-side that would not normally be seen together, the book offers new readings of Foster + Partners' oeuvre. Always thought-provoking, often surprising and sometimes humorous, the juxtaposed photographs and drawings have been chosen to illuminate evolving design ideas rather than detail the finished architecture. Connected by color and light, or contrasted by form and function, the image pairings are shown without the responsibility of spatial explanation. This abstraction puts the viewer close to the creative spark of the architect and offers a unique insight into one of the most inventive studios in the world.