Norman Foster
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
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, more subconscious, perhaps below the surface.
But nonetheless, so it's a design is a response to needs.
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 around a table.
and you work from the outset together.
Now, a critic of that will say, that sounds like a committee architecture.
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