An exhibition comprising two hundred drawings executed between 1958 to 2008 by Norman Foster is currently showing at Ivorypress Art + Books in Madrid. The exhibition is complemented by a series of colloquia on Art, Economics and Sustainability respectively.
Speakers include Stefan Behling, Ricky Burdett, Richard Cork, Norman Foster, Herbert Giradet, Jordi Gual, Richard Long, Saskia Sassen, Deyan Sudjic and Not Vital. The exhibition has been curated by Luis Fernández-Galiano, who is also acting as Colloquium Moderator.
In a gallery he himself has remodelled, two hundred drawings chart half a century devoted to architecture. From his formative years to the leadership of a firm that builds around the world, the dialogue between the eye and the hand through a pencil has been for Norman Foster a tool of analysis and pedagogy, useful for the conception of the works and the explanation of his intentions. Since many of the initial sketches are contained in the notebooks that the architect always carries, the exhibition includes fifty of them; and since all this graphic production is nothing but a device for the construction of buildings, displayed here are also half a dozen models that remind of the three-dimensional nature of architecture, no matter how often it begins in the humble two-dimensional support that paper provides. But a close observation of the traces can shed light on the creative process that has given rise to some of the masterpieces of the 20th century, and also show the capacity of architecture to improve our cities and our lives.
Luis Fernández-Galiano
