On Architecture

Architects employ tools to help communicate their ideas and visions. Common tools of the past included sketches, technical drawings, and physical models. Today, more architects use Building Information Modelling (BIM), 3D printing, and even augmented reality. But these advanced tools come with a price; architects must become experts at making them effective and sustainable for the foreseeable future—even when new tools threaten to take their place.

Featured Architect
Sir Norman Foster, Dip.Arch & Cert. TP, M.Arch

Sir Norman Foster, Dip.Arch & Cert. TP, M.Arch

British, 1935–

“The pencil and computer are, if left to their own devices, equally dumb and only as good as the person driving them.”


Since its founding in the late 1960s by Norman Foster, Foster + Partners has advanced to a global practice focusing on sustainable architecture, engineering, urbanism, and industrial design. The firm is recognized for many projects, among them the Reichstag, New German Parliament in Berlin, the Millennium Bridge in London, and Hearst Tower in New York City. Completed in 2007, Foster + Partners designed the undulating skylight over the Kogod Courtyard at the Old Patent Office Building, a venue for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. In 1999, Foster became a Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. That same year he was honored by Queen Elizabeth II with the title Lord Foster of Thames Bank.


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