Norman Foster Series

I have decided I will be done with the Norman Foster Series. Notice the difference between him and Frank Lloyd Wright:

• Foster designed pretty much exclusively large buildings and projects
• Wright designed anything you could think of, as I showed in This Post

Now I will be posting on random buildings.

#5 in the Norman Foster Series: Hong Kong International Airport

This is the Hong Kong International Airport; a multi-building complex with the main terminal designed by Norman Foster, a beautiful, curving main building. It is the 11th busiest airport in the world passenger-wise. It is the busiest airport in the world in the section of cargo. It took six years to build, and cost US$20 billion. 

It has 5 airplane docks that can handle the Airbus A80, the biggest passenger jet in the world.

It is also the most expensive airport building project ever! Make sure to look carefully at the pictures! They have some amazing details. Norman Foster also designed the Beijing International Airport, which surpassed this one in size. A neat fact is that when the current airport was built, two islands were joined into one, and the airport was built on that one. With all the added land between the two islands, it increased the space of Hong Kong by 1%!

#4 in the Norman Foster Series: HSBC Main Building

This is the headquarters for The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, otherwise abbreviated as HSBC. It is located in Central, Hong Kong. It is the fourth building built for HSBC in Central, all built in the same place. Here is the second one:

and here is the third one:

and the fourth one again:

The third building was at it's time of building, the tallest building between San Francisco and Cairo, Egypt.

It was also the first building in Hong Kong to be fully air conditioned.

The fourth building was was completed as of November 18, 1985, after 7 years of construction. The building costs, (calculated in the currency of that time), was Hong Kong $5.2 billion, making it the most expensive building built at that time. 

It is 178.8 meters tall, has 44 floors, and 1,065,627 feet squared. 30,000 tons of steel, and 4,500 tons of aluminum. It used elevators, but mainly escalators connecting every floor. The building is divided into 5 different parts as you can see in the picture above. To give more room inside, the supporting structure is on the outside. The framework is the detail that defines the building. It consists of 32 steel pillars in groups of 4, with supporting five triangular trusses that support and lock the pillars.

Like in all of Norman Foster's buildings, it is very energy efficient. Like in his Reichstag dome, he has a cone of mirrors at the top of the atrium, providing natural light, and cutting down costs. It has a sunshade, ( again, like in the Reichstag Dome), the cuts down the glare. The floor is made of panels that can be lifted up to access the power, or air conditioning, etc. Instead of fresh water being used in the air conditioning system, 

sea water is used, saving in transportation costs, as the building is right by a harbor.

This is a really cool building!

#3 in the Norman Foster Series: The Reichstag Dome

This dome is located in Berlin, Germany. It is a dome that replaced the old one destroyed in World War II by arsonists. The building had been partially restored, but the dome was not rebuilt till the 90's by Norman Foster. This symbolized the unification of East Germany and West Germany. Their parliaments had met in different buildings, but meeting in this one would symbolize their oneness. 

It is entirely different from the previous dome:

The building went under renovation during different decades, but the dome was destroyed. 

Norman Foster turned the Reichstag into a renown national landmark with his glass dome. He borrowed the idea from a suggestion (by Gottfried Bohmof ten years earlier) a large glass dome with a walkway.

The dome is accessible to the public, and allows them a view of the Parliament in session. And has two winding ramps leading up to the viewing cupola at the top of the dome. In the center is the cone made of mirrors that provided natural light, lowering the energy usage.  The cone has a sun shield that blocks the direct rays of the sun on the mirrors. It is a obvious change from the general Brutalism style of architecture in World War II. All in all, it is a really cool building.

Adolf Hitler book

The book I am using to research the Adolf Hitler outline was turned back into the library, so you will have to wait. Instead, I will do a post on another building in the Norman Foster series.

All the buildings I have posted on

• Commerzbank Tower
• The Swiss Re Building
• Beth Shalom Congregation
• The Johnson Wax Research Center
• The Emil Bach House
• The Imperial Hotel
• The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• Burj Khalifa
• Taipei 101
• Burj Al Arab
• Hagia Sophia
• The Minnesota Capitol 
• John Hancock Building
• Turning Torso 
• Westminster Abbey
• Walter Chrysler Building
• Notre Dame

In all, 17 buildings.

#2 in the Norman Foster Series: Commerzbank Tower

The Norman Foster Series
1. The Swiss Re Tower
2. The Commerzbank Tower

• In 1994 construction started on this tower in Frankfurt, Germany, and ended in 1997
• It is the tallest skyscraper in the European Union, soon to be overtaken by the Shard Bridge skyscraper
• 56 stories
• 300 m. at the top of the antenna
• 1.3 million ft. of office space
• Houses the Commerzbank headquarters
• This is the first skyscraper to use "sky gardens": at intervals up the towers there are gardens that can be viewed from the offices:

In this image, the illuminated rectangles spaced down the buildings are the niches housing the sky gardens.

(The sky gardens also provide more natural light, reducing the amount of electricity used in the building)

• The tower looked at from above is a equilateral triangle, with sides 60 m. long and rounded corners
• It was the first tower in Germany to use steel as the main building material.

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#1 in the Norman Foster Series: The Swiss Re Building

Norman Foster Series
1. Swiss Re Building

 

This is the Swiss Re Building designed by Norman Foster and Partners.
It was built 2001-03.
It is located in London, in the business section.
It was built and occupied by Swiss Re, but three years later was put up for sale for 600 million pounds, and was sold in a joint ownership for 630 million pounds.

This building is 180 meters tall. It has 40 levels.  It is a structurally strong building, needing no extra bracing or a damper. It uses half the power a normal building that size would use because of energy saving methods.

It was built in place of the Millennium Tower. The Millennium Tower was to0 tall, and restricted the view from Parliament. People say that you don't notice the tower much until you get to the same street it is on.
I think it is the most famous building built by Norman Foster and Partners.

The Norman Foster Series

My next series is going to be on Norman Foster.