How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? [MOVIE REVIEW]
“How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?”
“How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?” Such a peculiar title and yet so illustrative of the career arc of Norman Foster, master architect, winner of the Pritzker, Stirling (twice), and Prince Asturias Prizes in art and architecture. The child of working class parents in Manchester, England, Norman Foster always had his eyes on the sky and it is entirely possible that had he been sent to flight training when he served in the RAF, he would have become a pilot instead of the world famous, inspirational and boundlessly talented architect he became.
Charting the story from his humble beginnings, class should have dictated his career path. An excellent student, he was directed to a civil service career rather than university. It was due to astute and generous guidance by two different employers who noticed his gift for drawing that Foster eventually ended up at the University of Manchester School of Architecture and City Planning; and from there to the Yale School of Architecture by way of a prestigious fellowship. America was the perfect incubator for his talent because he was unfettered by the British class system and stolid expectations. America, Chicago in particular, showed an openness to experimentation and new ideas. And, as Richard Rogers, another world famous British architect who studied with Foster at Yale and with whom he would form a short-lived partnership, so patronizingly put it, Foster’s working class background focused him in a way that someone who hadn’t had to struggle would find hard to understand.
Because Foster did not have the kinds of contacts or financial backing of those to the manner born, he astutely carved out a practice ignored by the elite – industrial buildings. His first major success, in 1969, was the Fred Olsen, Ltd. administrative and leisure center, where he incorporated the radical concept that workers and managers should have contact with one another. This was also a time when Foster began a collaboration with Buckminster Fuller, he of the geodesic dome, that would continue until Fuller’s death in 1983. Fuller’s influence extended beyond design into an esthetic of harmony with the environment. He wanted Foster to think about the materials he was using and the impact of those materials on the environment, hence his question to Norman Foster, “How much does your building weigh?” Although Foster couldn’t answer the question when asked, he researched it and answered it the next day, forever altering his view of size, weight, dimension and ecology.
There are so many ways to describe Lord Foster’s work (yes, the poor boy from Manchester was eventually knighted), but the confluence of beauty and function, inspired by the Yale School of Architecture and it’s Bauhaus foundation, has always been paramount. Foster is also spare and economical, understanding the synergy between space and works of art. Architecture is not static or concrete to him — it is a philosophy that lives on.
This film, masterfully directed by Norberto Lopez Amado and Carlos Carcas, is beautifully filmed by Valentin Alvarez and scored by Joan Valent like a major motion picture. The music soars as the camera takes us across the Millau Viaduct in France, over the Millennium Bridge in London or up through the Hearst tower in Manhattan. The directors are in perfect harmony with Foster’s projects and the man himself. Deyan Sudjic, the screenwriter, is the director of the Design Museum in London and was trained as an architect. He narrates the film as the curator that he is, and it is no surprise that he chose other major artists like Richard Serra and Anish Kapoor, naming only a couple, to comment on Foster’s work.
Like the architecture and the architect himself, this is filmmaking on a grand scale and worth the trip to the Laemmle Music Hall the week of Feb. 17.
Neely also writes a blog about writers in television and film at http://www.nomeanerplace.com ER