Two hundred drawings draw us into the creative universe of Norman Foster

Ivorypress Art+Books offers Madrid an exhibition of scale models, sketches and notebooks designed by the architect over a fifty-year period

Norman Foster
Dibujo medido del Bourn Mill, 1958
Cambrisgeshire, UK (D830)

From the 1st of Septembre 2009 to the 19th of September 2009, at Ivorypress Art+Books, Madrid

Works: 200

Winner of the Pritzker Prize and the Prince of Asturias Prize, both in 1999, Fosters oeuvre, and especially the creative process behind it, are now placed under the microscope in a wide-ranging exhibition that reviews the drawings produced by the British architect between 1958 and 2008. The works will be on view until mid-September at Ivorypress Art+Books, the multidisciplinary venue dedicated to art books and exhibitions opened in Madrid by Elena Ochoa, the architects wife, in December 2008. 

The gallery at 48 Comandante Zorita where “Norman Foster: Drawings, 1958-2008” is being shown was renovated by Foster himself, and in it visitors will be able to discover the working methods used by the Manchester artist over the past fifty years, from his student days to the global expansion of his work and reputation at the head of Foster + Partners. Drawing, which the architect views as a tool for teaching and analysis, has been used by Foster throughout his career, not only to capture his initial ideas for buildings but also to explain his intentions for them. In an attempt to reveal the inner workings of Fosters gifted mind, the Madrid exhibit will display fifty notebooks that include his initial sketches, as well as six scale models that played a key role in the ultimate construction of some of his designs. The models serve to remind us of the three-dimensional nature of architecture in the context of an exhibition dominated by the two-dimensionality of the English architects drawings.

Norman Foster
Carre  d’Art, 1984 ‐1993
Nimes, Francia

Drawings, 1958-2008 is divided into six sections dedicated to Fosters formative years and the analysis of his output in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as well as the first ten years of the current century. We will be able to contemplate the sketches for historic designs that he made on travels across Europe in the early days, and others which would later bear witness to his fascination with industrial aesthetics as a member of Team 4. Precision, neutrality and meticulous technique defined his work in the 1970s, exemplified by the Sainsbury Centre and the Hong Kong Bank. In the 1980s, airports and aviation museums became the perfect vehicles for Foster to explore a new architectural airiness. From the 1990s to the present day, both his large and small-scale projects have attested his efforts to combine technical excellence, ecological efficiency and a touch of industrial design.
Parallel to the exhibition, three symposia in English will be offered at Ivorypress Art+Books between September 15 and 17. Participants will include Richard Cork, Richard Long, Not Vital, Norman Foster himself and the director of the Design Museum, London.