Norman Foster was born in Manchester in 1935. After graduating from Manchester University School of Architecture and City Planning in 1961 he won a Henry Fellowship to Yale University, where he gained a Master’s Degree in Architecture.

He is the founder and chairman of Foster and Partners. Founded in London in 1967, it is now a worldwide practice, with project offices in more than twenty countries. Over the past four decades the company has been responsible for a strikingly wide range of work, from urban master plans, public infrastructure, airports, civic and cultural buildings, offices and workplaces to private houses and product design.

Foster has established an international reputation with projects as diverse as the New German Parliament in the Reichstag in Berlin, Chek Lap Kok International Airport and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong, Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt, Willis Faber & Dumas Head Office in Ipswich, and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich. Since its inception, the practice has received more than 400 awards and citations for excellence and has won numerous international and national competitions.
He became the 21st Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate in 1999. He has been awarded the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Architecture (1994), the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture (1983), and the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture (1991). In 1990 he was granted a Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, and in 1999 was honored with a Life Peerage, becoming The Lord Foster of Thames Bank.

Foster has lectured throughout the world and has taught architecture in the United Kingdom and the United States. He has been Vice-President of the Architectural Association in London, Council Member of the Royal College of Art and was a founding trustee of the Architecture Foundation of London .