From June 2, in a palace in the neighborhood of Chamberí – designed by Joaquín Saldaña for the Duke of Plasencia in 1902 – one will be able to meet Norman Foster very closely. The British architect awarded with the Pritzker Prize and considered one of the best architects of our time has chosen Madrid as the place to have its Foundation. The Norman Foster Foundation contains an impressive archive of his work: models, plans and 1240 notebooks with information on all the projects in which he has been involved.
Its classical façade can confuse us, but Foster’s personal and futuristic mark is present on the design of an interior pavilion that shows car models, planes and buildings. Futuristic indeed, the visitor is received by a reproduction of Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, the famous statue by futuristic artist Umberto Boccioni.
The Norman Foster Foundation can be visited free of charge by appointment and, according to Foster, it was launched with the $ 100,000 endowment of the Pritzker Prize, which he received in 1999. He decided to dedicate that money so that others could form, travel and think. Since then, the Foundation has annually awarded a scholarship for architects and researchers to inquire «about the future of cities and the survival of communities».
Future, again. That’s the main theme of the inaugural forum of the Norman Foster Foundation, Future is Now, three sessions dedicated to cities, technology and design, and infrastructure. It started the day before the opening, June 1, in an amazing space: Madrid Royal Theatre. Some of the participants are urbanist Ricky Burdett, Apple designer Jonathan Ive and artists like Olafur Eliasson or Maya Lin.
In the Foundation we can find more than 8,000 drawings that the architect preserves: from a Manchester mill, drawn in 1958, to plans for the Droneport in Rwanda that the studio exhibited at the last Biennale di Venezia, and also the model of the future Mexico City Airport (which has just begun to be built).
The future, again. But the chance to visit the Foundation belongs to the present.
More information about the Norman Foster Foundation can be found in its website: normanfosterfoundation.org
