As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of considering history while designing for the present and the uncertainty of the future.
Norman Foster's quote reflects the role of an architect as someone who must navigate the complexities of time. They must draw from the architectural heritage of the past while creating structures that cater to current needs, all the while acknowledging that the future remains unpredictable. This artful balance requires both creativity and foresight, emphasizing that designs are not just functional but also evolve with society.
In practice
In a speech about innovative building designs, one might use this quote to highlight the role of an architect's vision.
We now think it hilarious that medieval streets were used as open sewers. Equally, our descendants will say: 'You won't believe this, but people were once allowed to hurl a couple of tons of dangerous metal around smashing into each other.'
Every time I've flown an aircraft, or visited a steelworks, or watched a panel-beater at work, I've learned something new that can be applied to buildings.
The most amazing lesson in aerodynamics I ever had was the day I climbed a thermal in a glider at the same time as an eagle. I witnessed, close up, effortlessness and lightness combined with strength, precision and determination.
Everything we design is a response to the specific climate and culture of a particular place.
It takes a lot of effort to make a building look effortless.
Architecture is an expression of values.
Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.
There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain's tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.
After a point of time, when you get success and fame, money and everything, the purpose of life has to be redefined. For me, I think that purpose is to build bridges. Artists can do that very easily, more than politicians.
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.
The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
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