Norman Foster

We know where you go.

There's a huge model immediately behind us here.

We're looking at a Beijing airport.

Beijing airport was built in five years.

Now, 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 know, you overfly metropolis together.

So there are a lot of messages, perhaps, mixed up in these analogies and comparisons.

It's interesting.

I'm working on a project right now.

And 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 quizzically and I said, but you've never heard of it because nobody ever heard of it.

So I said, well, check it out and the next meeting we'll 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, 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.