ctbuh.

org/papers

Title: High Rise and Genius Loci

Author: Chris Abel, University of Sydney

Subjects: Building Case Study

Urban Design

Keyword: Urban Design

Publication Date: 2006

Original Publication: Norman Foster Works 5. Prestel. 2006.

Paper Type: 1. Book chapter/Part chapter

2. Journal paper
3. Conference proceeding
4. Unpublished conference paper
5. Magazine article
6. Unpublished

© Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat / Chris Abel


1. Imperial architecture on
the Indian subcontinent –
Victoria Terminus (now
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus)
in Bombay (now Mumbai).
Designed by the English
architect F W Stevens,
(1847-1900) who spent
his professional life in India,
and completed in 1888, this
magnificent building follows
the Victorian Gothic Revival
style, then highly fashionable
for railway architecture
in England. However, its
magnificent filigrees and
carvings were executed
by Indian craftsmen and
included Indian architectural
tradition and idioms that
combined to form a style
of architecture unique
to Bombay.
430 Norman Foster Works 5
High-rise and Genius Loci
Chris Abel 2006
Beginning in the 1980s, tall buildings represent a growing
and increasingly important part of the Foster oeuvre,
including many of the studio’s iconic designs. The Hongkong
and Shanghai Bank, the Century Tower, the Commerzbank
and Swiss Re, together with the unbuilt Millennium Tower
projects, are all major landmarks, not only in the context of
Foster’s work, but in the history and evolution of high-rise
architecture generally.
Though the type itself precedes globalisation in its more
virulent guise, tall buildings have come to be commonly
identified with worldwide economic and cultural integration,
presenting ambiguous and problematic challenges to
designers. As such, Foster’s buildings mirror many of
the paradoxes peculiar to the form. Modern office or multi-
functional towers are, by necessity, two-faced creatures.
Even the blandest must to some degree respond to localised
demands of place and function. At their best, they can
provide both functional and symbolic bridges between the
global business and cultural environments in which their
occupants operate and the cities in which they stand.
Occasionally – certainly not often enough – the symbiosis
between building and city can be so strong that the
identities of each become inextricably linked, affecting
global as well as local perceptions of both. Straddling many
different spatial and cultural levels, no other building type
embodies the integrated world in which we now live quite
like modern skyscrapers of this kind.
The Foster studio’s own special way of handling this
delicate balancing act between global and local concerns
arises from the same desire to integrate and resolve what
often seem like contradictory demands, that one finds
in many of the practice’s projects, large or small. Not the
least of these concerns is a constantly shifting negotiation
between the public and private realms of space and
action. This applies especially to the studio’s tower projects,
where the balance between public and private domains is
perceived to be under threat from the very processes of
globalisation that are fuelling the proliferation of the type.
The exact constituents of those global processes
are much debated, but a brief summary of an emerging
consensus might proceed along the following lines.
Globalisation, it can be argued, has long been with us, if
only in a different guise. Competing trading and economic
empires organised on a genuinely global scale have been
in existence at least since the earliest European colonies
were established in the Americas, Africa and the East, the
legacy of which still influences current events. They were
accompanied by cultural exchanges of every sort and
shade, including those involving the arts and architecture.
While the dominant direction of influence was mostly
from Europe to the colonies, geographical remoteness
from the metropolitan centres of control permitted most
local traditions to continue to flourish and in many cases
to temper and to shape the imported culture. In some
instances, enthusiasts imported native influences into the
metropolitan centres themselves, there to be absorbed by
the more open-minded members of the cultural elite. The
mixed result of all this global economic and cultural activity
was a rich body of hybrid architecture and heterogeneous
urban forms, which generally added to the genius loci
or place identity of the recipient towns and cities.
From the relatively modest homes and churches made
from mud-brick of the Spanish settlers in the Americas, or
the timber-framed bungalows and ‘Palladian’ villas of British
Malaya and Singapore, to the more grandiose government
buildings of New Delhi and elsewhere, an extraordinary body
of colonial architecture of diverse and complex origins was
added to the global itinerary right up until the middle of the
twentieth century. Long ignored by historical purists, the
same mixed architectural forms and urban patterns are
now the subject of feverish study by a new generation
of ‘postcolonial’ scholars.
1 2
What distinguishes the current phase of globalisation
from these earlier phases, is the speed and totality of its
scope. Although they were culturally related, colonial
economic systems operated and competed against each
other from geographically and politically separate centres
of control, each with their own favoured local and overseas
markets. By contrast, what we now refer to as globalisation
constitutes the making of a single, fully integrated economic
system. Decisions affecting economic activity and the nature
and location of industries around the world – and, crucially,
who will work in those industries and what they will be
paid – are made by multi-national corporations in the same
way that they used to be made within discrete economic
systems and markets.
The knee-jerk reaction against
high-rise architecture that
usually accompanies criticism
of globalisation and urban
development is often misguided.
Two factors above all else are responsible for this change
of gear, both of which grease the free flow of industries,
goods and services. First and foremost, telecommunications
and the Internet have made it possible to communicate with
practically anyone, anywhere, at any time and to operate any
kind of business – if so required – from remote centres of
control around the clock. Secondly, the free flow of capital
across national boundaries, aided by permissive tax regimes,
effectively also frees multi-national corporations – at least
in principle – from any remaining geographical limitations
of operation.
The emergent ‘network society’, as Manuel Castells
describes it in his seminal work, The Information Age
(1996), is both footloose and highly flexible, the
consequences of which are changing the shape and location
of production and consumption around the world, affecting
the structure of urban growth along with it. Inevitably,
industry leaders in the West concluded that, if they
could produce the same goods at lower cost elsewhere
– especially if those new centres of production were
positioned closer to new markets – without incurring
penalties, then the logical step was to shift production
accordingly (generally to the advantage of the new
local workforce and to the disadvantage of the old).
Each of our buildings represents a very specific
response to place: the spirit of place, the
microclimate of place (because no two places are
alike), which I think is a very interesting challenge.
I am constantly asked: Do I think globalisation
has produced uniform, generic buildings? I would
suggest that the opposite is the case. I think
that any building has to grow from the ground
upwards. It has to grow from the ‘spirit’ of the
place – the things that make that place unique.
It is, if you like, an example of thinking globally
and acting locally. Norman Foster, lecture in Milan,
11 December 2003
These developments coincided over the same period 2. Commercial architecture
with the equally extraordinary rapid economic growth of in Hong Kong. In the
middle ground is the
the countries of Asia Pacific, which created a huge building former headquarters of
boom across the entire region. Something had to go wrong the Hongkong and Shanghai
and it did. Nevertheless, while the world financial crisis of Banking Corporation at
1 Queen’s Road Central,
1997 caused a drastic economic reversal in many countries designed by G L Wilson
in the region, the effects were generally both uneven and of Palmer and Turner,
temporary (China, with its relatively insulated currency and who completed numerous
landmarks in Hong Kong
vast internal market, hardly faltered). In some cases the and Shanghai and other
effects were actually beneficial, encouraging an overhaul major cities throughout
of outdated financial practices. Most countries – including the region. When it was
completed in 1935 the
Japan, once the engine of regional growth, but stalled 68-metre-high building
in recent years – have picked up speed again, rebuilding was the tallest in the
their old cities and building new ones at the same Eastern hemisphere. It
also introduced a number
frenetic pace as before. of Western technical
One effect of these events has been to give a new innovations, including air
impetus to high-rise architecture, in which Foster’s own conditioning, a high-tensile
work has played a special role. While skyscrapers have
steel frame and express lifts.
been a familiar and defining feature of cities in North
America since the beginning of the twentieth century,
prior to the Second World War the number of tall buildings
outside the West could almost be counted on one hand.
The tallest tower in the Eastern hemisphere for many years
was the old headquarters of the Hongkong and Shanghai
Bank, completed by Palmer and Turner in 1935 on the
same site in Hong Kong upon which Foster completed
his first skyscraper in 1986.
High-rise and Genius Loci 431

1. The Petronas Towers
in Kuala Lumpur by Cesar
Pelli. At 452 metres,
measured to their highest
point, they were the tallest
buildings in the world when
completed in 1998, though
they were unseated by the
Taipei 101 in 2003. The
towers attempt to adapt a
global type to local tradition,
with an Islamic influenced
geometrically polygonal plan.
2. Traditional Singapore
shophouses – examples
of a type found throughout
South-East Asia, which
combine living and working
in dense low-rise urban
communities.
432 Norman Foster Works 5
It is estimated that by 2030 two thirds of the
world’s population will be urbanised. While the
established giants such as London continue to
expand, a new generation of mega-cities in excess
of twenty-five million people is predicted. The
major challenge in such cities is to accommodate
more and more people, at greater densities than
before, while seeking to create a higher quality of
urban life. The tall building may not be the only
key, but with finite resources, and with less and
less land on which to build, it is a vital component
of the future city. Norman Foster, foreword to Sky
High: Vertical Architecture, 2003
Right: The exhibition Sky High: Vertical Architecture,
at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2003
Globalisation, with its need for regional offices
strategically positioned in the new centres of production and
finance – often where modern office space was previously
either non-existent or in short supply – combined with the
building boom in Asia Pacific to change all that. At the
exhibition of skyscrapers, Sky High: Vertical Architecture,
curated by Foster in 2003 at the Royal Academy of Arts
in London, the exemplars were more or less evenly divided
between East and West. However, if you discounted the
familiar early skyscrapers of Chicago and New York, the
balance of numbers shifted dramatically toward the East.
Most of the world’s tallest buildings completed over
the last two decades were built in Asia Pacific, many of
them in China, where older cities, such as Shanghai, have
been totally transformed. Significantly, the tallest buildings
to be built anywhere in the world since Skidmore, Owings
and Merrill (SOM) completed the Sears Tower in Chicago
in 1974, were Cesar Pelli’s Petronas Towers in Kuala
Lumpur, 1998, which are now instantly recognised
all over the world.
Such large-scale developments are often controversial,
generally with good reason. Poorly planned schemes can
result in the destruction of large areas of the historical
fabric, to the detriment of both the visual character
and general quality of urban life. Small businesses and
local residents may be displaced to make way for large
corporations or chain stores, which have no historical
association with the area. In the process, the rich mix
of activities we associate with the centres of older cities
has given way to the all too familiar mono-functional
central business district, or CBD, which only comes
to life during office hours.
1 2
Unsurprisingly, for many city dwellers as well as
concerned professionals, rather than signalling vigorous
growth, the high-rise skylines that mark these CBDs are
more frequently regarded as threats to traditional urban
culture. Yet this need not be the case. The knee-jerk
reaction against high-rise architecture that usually
accompanies criticism of globalisation and urban
development is often misguided, directed more by critics’
penchant for symbolic targets than by rational analysis.
Representing as they do an extreme form of urbanism, the
same qualities of great density and size and the ease of
recognition that invite popular admiration, also invite virulent
criticism, providing convenient focal points for a host of
anti-urban, anti-corporate ideologies.
However, the fault often lies more with outdated zoning
practices and weak urban design than with high-rise
building per se. The value of high-density, mixed-use urban
areas, reinforced by the advent of clean industries, is now
widely recognised by both developers and planners. It
is reflected in increasingly flexible zoning laws and new
approaches to multi-functional buildings, including tall
structures. Many planners and designers now argue that,
properly sited and conceived, tall buildings have a vital role
to play in the life and character of cities, complementing
older buildings of differing scales and functions.
Key factors in this change of thinking are the rising costs
of infrastructure and the energy use involved in moving large
numbers of people between suburb and city centre. Mixed-
use, high-density urban planning, it is argued, makes it
possible for more people to live and work within the same
or closely related areas, relieving pressures on transport
systems and reducing the need to build on open land.
Comparative urban studies of the relationship between
population density and the use of different forms of
transport have also consistently found that the higher
the density, the greater the use of public transport systems
over private cars. The gains include significant reductions
in carbon dioxide emissions – the main cause of global
warming – as well as fewer accidents and less time lost
in traffic jams, and hence improved quality of life. The
conclusions to be drawn from these studies can be
surprising, confounding popular preconceptions. For
example, the inhabitants of the low-density state of Oregon
in the United States – renowned for their environmental
sensitivities – consume a third more energy per head than
the people of the relatively high-density state of New York,
with its famed metropolis and skyscrapers. Why? Because
the widely dispersed Oregonians evidently treasure their
sports utility vehicles and other gas guzzlers as much as
their nature, whereas New Yorkers rely more upon their
trains and subways for getting around.
Occasionally, the symbiosis
between building and city can be
so strong that the identities of
each become inextricably linked.
By the same token, high-rise Hong Kong, as the most
densely populated city in the world, is also one of the most
energy efficient. As Jack Sidener writes in his 1998 paper,
‘Hong Kong: A Model for Sustainable Transport and Land
Use Planning’, with its integrated bus and mass rapid transit
(MRT) systems and remarkably low level of private car
ownership (forty-four per 1,000 persons), the Asian city
puts low-density conurbations across the Pacific, such
as Seattle, to shame.
The chaotic character of Hong Kong is about as far
removed from the nostalgic images of traditional settlements
and aesthetic consistency propagated by Christian Norberg-
Schulz in his book, Genius Loci (1980), as it is possible to
get. It is not just the splendid harbour or even the Peak, with
its staggered tiers of towers climbing up the lower levels,
that stay in the mind, though undoubtedly they are a vital
part of the city’s magic. Beyond the obvious attributes of its
dramatic site, Hong Kong exhibits an extraordinary buzz of
human activity that transforms even the poorest architecture
into a memorable scene, brimming with life and colour.
I think another aspect of human nature is the
expression of power and confidence: whether
it is medieval fortresses and cathedrals as the
symbols of church, state and city, or the towers
of Bologna and San Gimignano as icons of
prestige and power. I think that this kind of
expression will always be a part of our society.
Norman Foster, lecture in Milan, 11 December 2003
Left: Tall buildings from history, illustrated in Architecture
Without Architects by Bernard Rudofsky, 1964. On the
left-hand page are two of the original 200 towers of
Bologna; the Torre Asinelli (left) dating from 1109;
and the unfinished Torre Garisenda, begun in 1110.
Underlying this activity in Hong Kong is a highly flexible 3. Modern Hong Kong,
planning and economic system that nourishes all scales of viewed from the Peak. The
complex, interwoven social
activity. The embodiment of the so-called ‘dual economy’, and economic patterns of
Hong Kong happily embraces the small businesses this densely planned urban
traditionally based on extended family networks at one community are reflected
in its architecture.
extreme, and the large multi-national organisations that
characterise globalisation at the other. Parallel worlds of
economic and social behaviour with different perspectives
and methods of operation, both share the same territory
and benefit from the same superb infrastructure.
The same complex, layered mixture of economic and
social activity is reflected in the physical structure of the
city and its buildings. Hong Kong’s virtues – long overlooked
by architects and urban designers of a more picturesque
persuasion – include government supported mixed-use
planning in the vertical as well as in the horizontal
dimension. The basic approach is hardly new: dual-purpose
buildings, like the traditional ‘shophouses’ found throughout
South-East Asia, are commonplace. The same idea has
been translated into the city’s high-rise buildings, albeit
on a vastly greater scale. A single tall structure might house
everything from department stores, shops, small offices,
tailors and clinics on the lower floors, to a school and
playground on the roof with apartments in-between, many
of which may also double up as workplaces. Interspersed
with these densely packed, multi-functional buildings are
clusters of more conventional office towers. The result
is a vertical city quite unlike any other.
3
High-rise and Genius Loci 433

1. Marine City (1959)
by the Japanese Metabolist
Kiyonori Kikutake.
Indeterminism and
megastructures were
characteristic themes in
the work of the Metabolists.
Here, plug-in capsules
are set into free-standing
concrete service shafts.
Similar themes are at play
in Foster’s Hongkong Bank.
434 Norman Foster Works 5
The Hongkong Bank offered a critique of the
anonymity of so many tall buildings, introducing
a greater variety of spaces and uses. Instead of a
large central core, we created several small ones,
which we distributed at the edges of the plan.
That allowed us to open up views. Instead of
forcing people into lifts, we introduced escalators
for local movement between floors. We explored
the way the building might engage with the
neighbourhood and create a public space at
ground level. We looked at its ecology. Could it be
less dependent on fossil fuels or use renewable
forms of energy? Could it consume less energy
by deploying shading or other devices? Norman
Foster, lecture in Milan, 11 December 2003
Foster’s Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (1979-1986)
fits into this urban and cultural setting as if he and his
colleagues had been designing skyscrapers in Asia Pacific
all their lives, rather than being their very first attempt.
Revolutionary when it was completed, it is now possible to
see the Hongkong Bank in wider perspective as the first
in an extraordinary series of tall buildings designed by the
studio. Each of these has unique features, but all share
common attributes and values that can be traced back
to Hong Kong. For example, all straddle global and local
environments in symbolic as well as practical ways and
provide meeting grounds for the inhabitants of both worlds.
In this respect they fulfil the need for an existential location
at each level: a place in the wider world beyond the city,
and a place in the city and district in which the building
stands. To these two primary dimensions Foster has also
added a third, crucial dimension of identity, much neglected
in the design of office towers: a sense of place within
the building itself.
The playing out of these three dimensions of meaning
can best be understood by looking at Foster’s high-rise
buildings together, examining how each dimension has been
interpreted throughout the series. Taking the broadest view
first, the manner in which the Hongkong Bank addresses
the world beyond the city set the tone for subsequent
projects. In this respect, as in most others, Foster’s approach
differs radically from the mainstream. The dominant model
for the tower type for Post-Modern designers throughout the
1980s and ‘90s was the Chrysler Building, with its classical
tripartite composition of base, middle and ‘capital’. However,
none of this new species has come anywhere near the
qualitative heights of the Chrysler or other towers of that
earlier generation. Different from each other only in surface
detail, little if any serious design effort went into the design
of the interiors beyond the lobby spaces. Intended to create
a striking corporate image, the pattern was repeated so
often and in so many cities throughout the world that it
had the reverse effect, dulling responses and eventually
making it difficult to distinguish one Post-Modern tower
or CBD from another.
In one sense there is a delight in making
technology and materials work as hard as
possible simply because we can. However, at the
beginning of the twenty-first century there are
far more urgent reasons for building tall: cultural,
demographic, economic and environmental. Two
vital factors are global population growth and
the increasing rate of urbanisation. The world’s
population has doubled to six billion since 1960
and is currently growing at the rate of seventy-
eight million a year – a pattern that is expected
to continue for at least the next decade. Norman
Foster, foreword to Sky High: Vertical Architecture, 2003
Foster’s towers belong to an altogether different
tradition, dating back to the engineering-led Modernist
designs in Chicago by SOM with Fazlur Khan, of which
the John Hancock Center, 1969, is the prime exemplar.
A mixed-use building housing apartments and offices as
well as commercial spaces, its tapered steel structure was
designed to accommodate the different functions as well
as deal with the enormous wind loads. The striking profile
and combination of structural and functional integrity give
the Hancock Center a stature and place in the popular
image of the city achieved only by the greatest buildings
(significantly, the ‘Windy City’ is more popularly identified
with the outline of the Hancock than that of SOM’s
Sears Tower, its later and taller rival).
The value of high-density, mixed-
use urban areas, reinforced by
the advent of clean industries,
is now widely recognised.
Conceptually, the Hongkong Bank’s division into
structurally independent and (potentially) extendable
vertical bays of varying heights bears more resemblance
to Japanese Metabolist projects of the 1960s and ’70s,
than to the finite forms of Chicago and New York. The
complex way the Bank’s tower meets the ground, opening
up a public space beneath, also differs significantly from
the business-as-usual, undifferentiated lower floors of the
Hancock building. However, what the Bank unquestionably
shares with the Hancock is a lucid expression of strength
and durability. The image derives not from any surface
manipulations, but from the integration of space, function
and structure, made in this case all the more visually
transparent by the Bank’s clear glass skin and
hollow core.
1 2
For the Hongkong Bank as client, faced in the late
1970s with the imminent transfer of Hong Kong from
British to Chinese control, the projection of strength and
power carried more than the usual symbolic overtones.
A tangible expression of the Bank’s faith in the future
of the city and its own special place in the region’s
economy, the Hongkong Bank radiates global confidence.
Likewise, the distinctly Oriental aesthetic – partly due to its
indeterminate megastructure and partly to the traditionally
exaggerated play of opposites between strength and
lightness – carries its own messages across Asia
Pacific and beyond.
The same aesthetic and structural expressionism was
continued in the design of the Century Tower, completed
in Tokyo in 1991, with related and more obvious symbolic
implications (in this case the image of strength and
durability also carries extra meaning, the building being
specially designed to survive earthquakes as well as
financial shocks). Standing in a relatively open area on
the north side of the Kanda River, formerly part of the
ancient city’s line of defences, the building marks the
historic boundary between the old city centre and the
newer suburbs. With its exposed structure resembling a
stack of Japanese gateways, it creates a striking landmark.
Hailed at home and abroad as the first truly Japanese
skyscraper, albeit designed by a mostly British team of
architects and engineers – Arup again, as in all subsequent
projects – the Century Tower also marked the end of
the first stage in Foster’s high-rise experiments.
While they might seem to be logically far apart, the
relationship between a building’s place in the wider world
and its place in the city where it stands are increasingly
blurred. Urbanists like Anthony King and David Harvey,
along with Castells, have long argued that many of the
major cities of the world – literally, ‘world cities’ – including
all those financial and cultural centres like London, New
York, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo, where Foster has
built, now compete directly with each other across the
globe as powerful economic entities in their own right.
As a designer, you are always aware of precedent.
The challenge is to move beyond that – to
‘reinvent’ in some way. In architecture, as in
nature, you find evolutionary leaps forward that
change your understanding of what is possible.
Mouzhan Majidi, in conversation with the editor, 2007
Far left: One leap forward – the Chrysler Building, New
York, designed by William Van Alen and completed in
1929. At 1,047 feet (319 metres) high, it was briefly
the world’s tallest building.
Left: Another advance – the John Hancock Center,
Chicago, designed by Bruce Graham of SOM, with Fazlur
Khan, and completed in 1970. A 100-storey mixed-use
high-rise, it combines offices with apartments, a
television station, observatory and restaurant.
In his penetrating study of the past, present and future 2. The Hongkong and
direction of cities, Postmetropolis (2000), Edward Soja Shanghai Bank, Hong Kong
(1979-1986). The
goes even further. He suggests that, as the developing requirement to build one
world’s populations become increasingly urbanised, so the million square feet in a short
entire globe is coming to resemble one vast, interconnected timescale suggested a high
degree of prefabrication,
urban conglomeration, with its major and minor centres including plug-in factory-
and regional hinterlands. Structured not unlike Los Angeles finished service modules,
– Soja’s favourite model – or any of the other familiar while the need to build
downwards and upwards
megacities like those above, which now typify the largest simultaneously led to the
areas of growth, the new ‘postmetropolis’ world can only adoption of a suspension
be fully understood in this way as an urban continuum. structure, with pairs of steel
masts arranged in three
Likewise, Soja argues that human behaviour, both individual bays, which allowed flexible
and collective, occurs on many interrelated spatial levels, column-free floors.
from the micro- to the macro-scale: ‘our “performance” as
3. Century Tower, Tokyo
spatial beings takes place at many different scales, from the (1987-1991) advances
body, or what the poet Adrienne Rich once called “the ideas first explored in the
geography closest in”, to a whole series of more distant Hongkong Bank, though
geographies ranging from rooms and buildings, homes and
it is not a corporate
headquarters but an office
neighbourhoods, to cities and regions, states and nations, block with a wide range
and ultimately the whole earth – the human geography of amenities, including a
furthest out.’
health club and museum.
Its structural system, of
The role of architecture and urban design in this multi- eccentrically braced frames,
dimensional urban world is neither the preconceived stage- responds to seismic
engineering requirements
set for human action generated by other means, favoured in a city where earthquakes
by Post-Modernists, nor the deterministic motivator once are common; but it also
propagated by orthodox Modernists. Rather, it is more like resonates with traditional
Japanese forms.
an interactive medium, as much shaped by human activity
as shaping it. Similarly, it may be argued that tall buildings
of the kind discussed here can only fulfil their role as
interactive media for behaviour, if they are consciously
designed to both attract and stimulate interaction at
many different levels.
3
High-rise and Genius Loci 435

1. People gather in the
covered piazza at the base
of the Hongkong Bank. The
Bank’s masted structure
allowed the service cores to
be pushed to the perimeter;
and because the floors are
suspended, the ground plane
could be opened up as a
public space – a rarity in
this city. A mirrored
sunscoop reflects sunlight
down through the central
atrium to the floor of the
piazza, which at weekends
has become a lively picnic
spot. From here, escalators
rise up to the main banking
hall, which with its glass
underbelly is conceived as
a ‘shop window for banking’.
436 Norman Foster Works 5
Foster’s respect for social behaviour as a design
generator, and most of all, his studio’s consistent disposition
towards mixed-use planning and design, fits comfortably
within this larger picture of a complex and fluid urbanised
world. The results as demonstrated by Foster’s high-rise
architecture in particular, but also by other works, are
worlds away from the immutable urban typologies defined
by purely spatial characteristics and morphology presented
by Aldo Rossi and others. More like dynamic and responsive
incubators of social interaction, the buildings that
characterise the studio’s approach to high-rise design –
as with the Hong Kong models which inspire much of
Foster’s work – generate a sense of place out of a
purposeful intensity of human activity and a conscious
overlapping of boundaries between the public and
private realms, or between one kind or scale of activity
and another.
Typically reinforcing or extending the public realm where
it already exists, or, just as often, creating one where none
existed before, Foster’s approach to high-rise architecture
as a component of urban design straddles the existential
middle ground in the city between the wider world beyond,
or the ‘geography furthest out’, and the place within the
building itself, bordering the ‘geography closest in’. For the
Foster studio, in contrast to conventional approaches to
high-rise design which generally decrease urban activity
at ground level – the familiar windswept urban desert –
this invariably means increasing the level and quality
of activity around the base of the tower. The strategy
takes various forms, but they are all aimed at the
same goal – the creation of a busy focus of urban
life, firmly rooting the tower into its social as well
as physical context.
1 2
Far left: Rockefeller Plaza, which forms the public focus
of the Rockefeller Center in New York, designed by
Raymond Hood and completed in 1939. The largest
privately held complex of its kind in the world, it
nonetheless celebrates the public realm.
Left: The plaza in front of the Seagram Building, New
York, designed by Mies van der Rohe and completed in
1958. The building is pulled back from Park Avenue to
create a public space – a rarity in this part of Manhattan
– which gives the tower an added sense of grandeur
and civic aplomb.
Even the Hongkong Bank, a single-use structure built
onto a cramped site across the road from Statue Square,
Hong Kong’s oldest and largest public square, makes a
positive contribution to the public realm. Juggling constraints
and incentives, by opening up the ground level to form a
pedestrian piazza beneath the building, Foster was able
to persuade the planning authority to increase the plot
development ratio to 18:1 when 14:1 was the norm.
The results are beneficial to both the Bank and the city –
including a mind-blowing public view up into the very bowels
of the Bank, as well as a useful pathway across the block,
creating new sightlines through to the square in front.
Many planners and designers
now argue that, properly sited
and conceived, tall buildings
have a vital role to play in the
life and character of cities.
If the Hongkong Bank provided only a partial view
of Foster’s urban design strategy for tall buildings, the
Commerzbank, Frankfurt (1997), provided the first complete
example of the strategy in full swing. The new tower stands
in the middle of a city block close to the bank’s former
headquarters. Effectively concealing the immense height
of the tower from close quarters, existing low-rise buildings
around the perimeter of the block were refurbished and
new ones inserted, reinforcing the traditional scale and
character of the surrounding streets. Bisected by a new
public thoroughfare, the interior of the block next to the
tower is filled by a large covered galleria, which contains
cafés, bars and restaurants beneath its great steel and
glass roof. What was formerly an inaccessible ‘dead’
zone in the middle of an undistinguished city block
is now a hive of urban activity.
The development of Foster’s urban design strategy
has proceeded in parallel with the studio’s commitment
to energy conservation. While structural design continued
to play a vital and prominent part in all the studio’s towers,
following the Commerzbank, engineering-led design
increasingly came to mean environmental as well as
structural engineering. Aside from its adjacent galleria,
the Commerzbank was and remains in many respects
also the most ‘civilised’ building of its type.
Modern high-rise buildings go down to the
ground and in that sense they are anti-social. In
contrast with the nineteenth century, when public
buildings also created a civic gesture. Look at
the Milan Galleria, which connects the cathedral
square in Milan with La Scala: it gives space to
the pedestrian, it produces an elegant urban
shortcut. I still refer back to an image of the
Galleria which I took as a student forty years
ago, and it’s still as important to me now as
it was then. Norman Foster, lecture to the Osaka
Symposium, 20 Sept 1987
Right: The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan
(1865-1877), designed by Giuseppe Mengoni.
While both the Hongkong Bank and the Century Tower
incorporate efficient climate control systems, they rely
upon mechanical ventilation. By contrast, the Commerzbank
is the first skyscraper in the world to have an effective
system of natural ventilation. It changed assumptions
about the environmental standards corporate clients set
themselves, or the kind of self-image the more progressive
firms now wish to project in a world increasingly sensitive
to ecological issues.
Foster’s approach, and corporate Europe’s new
receptiveness to ecological design, found fresh expression
again in the City of London, the financial heart of the capital,
with the Swiss Re tower, completed in 2004. It has quickly
assumed iconic status, not only for its client, but for the City
of London in which it stands. Instead of filling up the whole
block as before, Foster pushed all the new accommodation
skywards, maximising the open space around the tower
(in line with current thinking on the need to encourage
city workers to leave their cars at home, both architects
and client also agreed there was no need to provide
private parking as the tower was amply served by
the City’s Underground lines and bus services).
The bullet-shaped building is designed to minimise wind
forces and exploits pressure differentials around the curved
walls to ventilate the interior. The circular plan form sits
comfortably in the centre of the square while the narrowing
base of the tower minimises the building’s footprint and
cuts out unsettling down draughts and reflections. A
small service block in one corner includes a ground floor
restaurant, which spills out into the square during summer,
otherwise the space around the tower is left completely
open. Like the famous plaza in front of Mies van der Rohe’s
Seagram Building in New York – another rare example of
corporate munificence – the Swiss Re tower creates a
precious new addition to the public realm in the very
densest part of the City.
At the base of the Commerzbank we created a
pedestrian thoroughfare – an arcade – that ties
the building into the dense urban fabric of the
city. It came out of a close collaboration between
the city council, the bank and the museum of
contemporary art. It has bars and restaurants with
spaces for art exhibitions and other events and
is a popular meeting place at lunchtime and after
office hours – not just with those that work in the
bank, but drawing people from a much wider area
of the city. Spencer de Grey, in conversation with the
editor, 2007
Representing the modern side of a country still weighed 2. The public galleria at the
down by rigid tradition, the tower for the Al Faisaliah base of the Commerzbank,
Frankfurt (1991-1997).
Complex, Riyadh (2000), presents a more ambiguous and The tower is anchored into
exotic image to the world. Gracefully tapered and capped its city block through the
with a spherical restaurant of steel and blue glass, it was the restoration and rebuilding
of the perimeter structures,
first skyscraper to be built in the desert capital and quickly which reinforce the lower-
became synonymous with the city – just as the Hancock scale original urban fabric.
Center, the Hongkong Bank and the Commerzbank are Threading through the
scheme is the galleria, which
identified with their respective cities, and vice versa. contains restaurants, cafés
Underlying the exotic image, however, is the same fusion and spaces for social and
of structural and environmental engineering that underpins cultural events.
all the Foster studio’s recent towers. While the intense heat 3. Swiss Re Headquarters,
and dusty conditions in Riyadh ruled out natural ventilation, London (1997-2004).
the tower incorporates sunshades and features many London’s first ecological
tall building, conceptually
water-saving as well as energy-saving devices.
The pointed, steel and concrete framed tower fronts on
it develops ideas explored
in the Commerzbank and
to a broad, grass covered public open space – in fact the before that in Climatroffice,
a theoretical project with
roof of a large underground conference and banqueting
hall. One of the very few such green spaces in that parched
Buckminster Fuller that
suggested a new rapport
city, it is bounded on one side by a hotel and on the other between nature and the
workplace. Its form responds
by an apartment block, opening out on to a busy main to the constraints of the
street from where it can be clearly seen and accessed. site, the slimming of its
Occasionally, as in the uncompleted Headquarters for profile towards the base
maximising the public
Daewoo Electronics (1995), in Seoul, densely mixed realm at ground level.
layers of public and commercial spaces extend several
storeys below ground and out into the surrounding site,
creating whole semi-underground urban environments
– a trend that is likely to spread as pressures on land
in cities increases.
3
High-rise and Genius Loci 437

The image of the Eiffel Tower really serves as a
reminder that it wasn’t that long ago that vertical
movement in a structure could be a very exciting,
three-dimensional experience, in sharp contrast
to what we seem to take for granted in virtually
every high-rise building which are little more than
a kind of closed metal box. Norman Foster, lecture
at Glasgow School of Art, 20 November 1987
Left: the Eiffel Tower, designed by Gustave Eiffel and
completed for the Paris 1889 Exhibition. A favourite
image, an enlargement of this photograph hung in Foster
Associates’ Great Portland Street studio.
I spent a day in the Commerzbank in Frankfurt
recently, and it was extraordinary. It reminded me
of what real innovation in design is all about …
The garden spaces are positioned so you pass
through them. They’re passively heated, so on the
grey winter day I was there they were cool and
fresh and smelled of greenery, reconnecting
people with the outside and some idea of nature.
They have become vital to internal communication
and the way the building functions. I spent more
than twelve hours in this bank behemoth and
expected to come out with a severe dose of cabin
fever. But I didn’t. I felt fresh and full of beans, a
revelation to me and a testament to the design.
Charlie Luxton, FX Magazine, February 2004
It is a moot point as to whether when you
commission an architect, you want a landmark
or a trophy building so you can say: ‘I’ve got one
of those’. A lot of the world’s leaders I think are
like collectors. They don’t collect paintings. They
collect buildings and to have a Foster is one of
the things which you want. That is perhaps a
cynical view. What they are looking for is a level
of sophistication which says: ‘As a city, we are
world class. Obviously we are world class because
look we’ve got a Norman Foster building. Hugh
Pearman, ‘Front Row’, BBC Radio 4, 28 December 2007

1. The Al Faisaliah Complex,
Riyadh (1993- 2000). A key
element in Riyadh’s urban
development, the complex
includes Saudi Arabia’s
first skyscraper alongside a
five-star hotel, a banqueting
and conference centre,
apartments and a three-
storey shopping mall. Above
its thirty floors of office
space, the tower houses the
highest restaurant in Saudi
Arabia, set within a golden
glass sphere 200 metres
above ground level.
2. Daewoo Electronics
Headquarters, Seoul (1995).
The tower’s distinctive,
166-metre, tapered profile
optimises the planning
envelope permissible within
strict shadow regulations
to create a curving form,
evocative of a leaf or a
traditional Korean sailing
ship. The climate-responsive
facade incorporates
adjustable blinds, which can
collect or reject solar gain.
Like the famous public square and linked spaces at
the Rockefeller Centre, in New York – an example of
magnificently effective urban design – when sensitively
handled such environments can offer just as strong a sense
of place as any urban space above ground. Other times, as
with Foster’s Millennium Tower project for Tokyo (1989) –
a project specifically conceived in response to the shortage
of building land in that city – the adjacent spaces and
structures take a radically new form, in this case in the
shape of a large enclosed marina providing the offshore
equivalent of an urban greenbelt.
Though not as immediately visible, the handling of the
interior spaces where the occupants spend their working
lives is also central to Foster’s scheme of things, and
contributes in large measure to the impact these buildings
make. Second only in social and psychological importance
to the private home, the workplace has been a consistent
focus of Foster’s attention throughout the practice’s history,
no less in tall buildings than in the low-rise factories and
offices where Foster began his career. A common strategy
in the design of nearly all the Foster towers – the Al
Faisaliah and Swiss Re towers are two exceptions – is to
shift the service cores along with much of the supporting
structure to the perimeter, so freeing up the interior spaces
to be modelled vertically as well as horizontally for the
greatest social and visual effect.
First used by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Larkin Building,
Buffalo (1903), then by Louis Kahn in his Richards Medical
Research Laboratories, Philadelphia (1965) – both medium-
rise buildings – prior to Foster’s towers the strategy had
never been applied to a genuine skyscraper.
The shape and character of these interior spaces, and
the part they play in giving form and a sense of place to
life within the building, comprises the third dimension of
meaning for tall structures, where personal experience is
most affected. They can generally be divided into two kinds
of spaces, each serving a different social and experiential
function: those which serve as semi-public spaces, such
as entrance ways and foyers, which connect the building
with its adjacent external spaces and buildings, and those
large internal spaces like atria and double-height floors,
which open up and enlarge the shared domain of work
and social life.
The development of Foster’s
urban design strategy has
proceeded in parallel with
the studio’s commitment
to energy conservation.
Often, both kinds of spaces intersect. The eight-storey
high ‘atrium’ – not quite a true atrium because the ‘roof’
is a giant mirror of reflected light – of the Hongkong Bank
and the pedestrian piazza beneath, comprise a single,
unforgettable space that visually integrates public passage,
entry, banking hall and offices above. The first office tower
to break with the standard ‘kebab’ of visually and socially
separate floors, the free flowing, unitary spaces of the Bank
have since been much imitated. As with all such spaces, the
brilliant quality of the natural light flooding into the atrium –
directly through the glass walls or indirectly via the mirror
above – has as much to do with the unique sense of place
inside the banking hall and surrounding floors as the
structure of the space itself.
At Century Tower, a narrow, full-height atrium rises from
the middle of the two-storey foyer. It opens up the building
from side to side, allowing natural light to stream in from all
directions. Similarly, the tall foyer space of the Commerzbank
connects directly with the public galleria on one side and
the triangular, full-height atrium in the centre of the tower,
again affording breathtaking views all the way up.
As with the Commerzbank, the entranceway under the Many of these towers are also topped out with distinctive 3. One of the sky gardens in
Al Faisaliah tower connects it directly with the adjacent open structures and spaces, creating a further series of special the Commerzbank, Frankfurt
(1991-1997). These four-
spaces and buildings, creating a covered link across the ‘places-in-the-sky’. Rejecting the decorative model of the storey gardens are set at
complex. Exposing the massive supporting structure of the Chrysler’s spire, Foster has opted in favour of a more different levels on each of
tower to full view, the space is gently lit from above through elevated and enclosed version of Le Corbusier’s populated the three sides of the tower,
forming a spiral of gardens
a sloping roof of metal ‘petals’ and from the rear through and functional rooftops – also an integral part of Hong around the building. As a
a tall, coloured glass mural. Kong’s vertical lifestyle. Instead of being given over to result, on any level only two
Reflecting the progression from outside to inside, and mechanical plant, as is usually the case with skyscrapers, sides of the tower are filled
with offices. The gardens
from public, to semi-public, to private realms, these large, the rooftops of the Foster towers are fully exploited for their become the visual and social
impressive volumes form part of an integrated hierarchy of unique locations. Offering panoramic views over the cities in focus for village-like clusters
major and minor spaces, not unlike the hierarchies of urban which they stand, the blue glass sphere atop the Al Faisaliah of offices. They play an
ecological role, bringing
spaces in their surroundings. Frequently, the spatial and tower, the ramped floors of the ‘theatre’ atop the Jiushi daylight and fresh air into
social order is visibly reinforced with a structural breakdown tower in Shanghai, and the domed restaurant atop Swiss Re, the central atrium, and form
of the tower into vertical segments or ‘villages’ – clusters of all provide knock-out spaces, joining building and occupants places for staff to relax
during refreshment breaks
internal floors and spaces – creating functional and social with the horizon and the world beyond in a way that only bringing a social dimension
zones with their own distinctive identity, further reducing the tall buildings designed like this can. to the workplace.
scale of the building both internally and externally. At their The idea of the tall building as a small city, with its own
4. An atrium space in the
most dramatic, as with the four-storey-high sky gardens of functional and spatial subdivisions and focal points, which Swiss Re Headquarters.
the Commerzbank, they provide green and inviting focal underlies all of these designs, is most clearly elaborated The building’s circular floor
points and recreational areas for workers in the overlooking in the two experimental tower projects for Tokyo – the plates are planned radially,
offices – mini urban squares complete with cafés. Mimicking Millennium Tower and M-Tower – both commissioned
and each is rotated with
respect to the one above
normal ground level activities and features at conveniently by Obayashi, the Japanese construction company. What or below it. This allows the
staggered intervals right up the structure, they bridge the for Foster’s smaller towers is an abstract urban model, spaces between the ‘fingers’
formerly separate interior world of the skyscraper and the is for the Millennium and M towers a practical way of
of each floor to combine to
form spiralling six-storey sky
urban realm below. accommodating multiple functions and tens of thousands gardens. These spaces are
More frequently, as with the Hongkong Bank, two-storey of inhabitants. Though not as tall as Frank Lloyd Wright’s in effect the tower’s ‘lungs’,
helping to distribute fresh air
high spaces placed at intermediate levels up the building ‘One Mile High’ tower project for Chicago (1956), the throughout the building and
provide generous areas for large or small canteens and original model for all subsequent ‘vertical cities’, Foster’s regulate the internal climate.
cafés, internal gardens and informal meeting places. These experimental designs bring that concept much closer
intermediate social zones are made all the more attractive to reality. Like the tapered Hancock Center, the conical,
by being easily accessible from above and below via tubular structures with their helical frames are highly
open stairways or escalators serving each floor, creating resistant to wind forces (the huge mass of the buildings
sociable movement systems in themselves – also a much alone would protect them from earthquakes) and also
imitated feature. readily accommodate different functions at different
The naturally ventilated sky gardens of the Commerzbank, heights of the building.
which step up the building in a spiral formation, are repeated
on a smaller scale in the stepped sky courts of the Swiss
Re tower. Intended in the original scheme to be planted
like the Commerzbank gardens, the landscaping was
unfortunately omitted in the final execution of the building.
Even without the planting, however, the effect of the
dramatically stepped atria is to create a series of powerful
focal spaces, visually linking the whole interior vertically
as well as opening it up to natural light and air movement.

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438 Norman Foster Works 5 High-rise and Genius Loci 439


People imagine that density is somehow equated
with poverty. But that does not follow. Monaco
and Macau are two of the world’s densest urban
communities, yet they are at the opposite ends
of the spectrum socially and economically. It is
interesting to note the shifting geographical
spread of tall buildings in the last two decades
and the changing attitudes to skyscrapers around
the world. The established centres in the West
have fast been overtaken by the rush to build tall
in Asia and the Pacific Rim. Norman Foster, foreword
to Sky High: Vertical Architecture, 2003
Far left: The Monte Carlo waterfront., Monaco.
Left: The dense urban centre of Macau.
Our starting point was to ask: why should a tall
building be either a place to work or a place to
live? Why couldn’t it be both? Then, why couldn’t
you incorporate a whole range of uses in the
same way that a city neighbourhood is more
interesting when it offers a mix of activities? With
that came a recognition that society changes with
time and so the building would have to be flexible
too. The Millennium Tower would have a resident
population of up to 60,000 and provide everything
from apartments, workplaces, department stores
and all the leisure amenities of a traditional urban
quarter. It would harvest its own energy and
process its own waste. It would be a ‘city in the
sky’. David Nelson, in conversation with the editor, 2006
It is interesting to contemplate the impact of the
Millennium Tower just in terms of density. The
building can house a population almost twice
that of Monaco and yet it would occupy only 0.013
square kilometres of land compared to Monaco’s
5.05 square kilometres. I am not suggesting for
one moment that that is a model for a northern
European city. But if you look at it in the context
of the emerging mega-cities, and the explosive
growth around the Pacific Rim, you can begin to
see the logic of the design. It represents quite
a transformation of the traditional urban model.
Norman Foster, lecture in Milan, 11 December 2003

1. The marina at the base
of the Millennium Tower,
Tokyo (1989).
2. Cross-section through
the Millennium Tower.
Effectively a city in the
sky, the 840-metre tower
presents a solution to the
social challenges of global
urban expansion. Rising out
of Tokyo Bay, 2 kilometres
offshore, it is designed to
house a community of up to
60,000 people and contain
offices, clean industries and
manufacturing along with
shops, hotels, cinemas and
every kind of urban amenity.
3. A comparative cross-
section through the 535-
metre-high M-Tower,
Tokyo (1989). Though land
based and shorter than its
predecessor, it incorporates
a number of significant
changes suggested by
the earlier investigations.
In place of a central core,
the centre of the building
is completely opened up.
Cavernous star-shaped
atria, containing shops,
restaurants, cinemas,
gardens and other amenities,
common to any urban
district, provide the social
focus of the building.
However, unlike the regular floors of the Chicago
building, but like all the Foster towers and the urban models
that inspire them, the functional and spatial subdivisions
of the Tokyo towers are clearly articulated both inside and
outside – and on a scale close to the real thing. The effect
is best seen in the second and smaller project, the land-
based M-Tower. While the service cores in the Millennium
Tower are bunched together in the middle of the structure,
in the M-Tower they are pushed away from the centre
towards the periphery in Foster’s preferred fashion, opening
up the heart of the building. The circular floor plan is also
divided into five sections or ‘urban blocks’ articulated by
large atria crossed by bridges, allowing natural light and
ventilation to penetrate deep into the structure.
Vertically, the building is further subdivided into
‘districts’ of thirty storeys each, separated by five-storey
high ‘district centres’, which also serve as sky lobbies
for vertical transportation. Somewhere between a familiar
urban piazza and a vision out of a science fiction movie, the
image of the open spaces at the centre of these suspended
‘districts’, with their cavernous ‘roofs’ above and their
surrounding shops, cafés and theatres, carries urban
place-making into an entirely new world.
The vision of high-rise architecture that these projects
present is a far cry from the stereotypical images of
identical towers that still colour debates about the merits
and demerits of the form, though Foster is not alone in
seeing things differently. Neither is all the credit for the
recent innovations in tall buildings due only to the architects
and engineers responsible – the clients involved merit just
as much recognition for sticking out their corporate and
individual necks. The message that innovation pays is hardly
a new one in business circles, though it seems to be slower
to take hold in architecture and construction.
Unlikely as it may seem, globalisation itself is emerging
as much as a force for innovation and diversity as it is for
integration. In a challenging essay, ‘The local and the global:
globalization and ethnicity’ (1991), Stuart Hall questions the
received wisdom that globalisation inevitably results in the
homogenisation of cultures and patterns of consumption.
He argues that, in order to succeed in the new markets that
have been opened up around the world, many multi-national
corporations are compelled to adapt themselves and their
products rapidly to suit local markets and tastes. As they do
so, organisational structures are also changing shape, away
from the centralised mammoths of popular folklore towards
more flexible, decentralised confederations of smaller
and semi-autonomous firms.
It would be naïve to believe that all multi-nationals
are going to follow this promising path without added
inducements of the sort that only regional and international
pressures and agreements can produce. But it would
be equally remiss to ignore the creative cross-cultural
energies being released by globalisation, whether it is in
the extraordinary crossovers evidenced in popular music,
or in the proliferation of architectural hybrids evinced in
a new cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. We
should not, therefore, be altogether too surprised at the
diversity evinced in the most recent exemplars of high-rise
architecture – not least in the Foster studio’s work – all
of which owe something to the same global processes.
The pressures on competing world cities also now include
‘quality of life’ factors as much as anything else, embracing
the workplace as well as other attractions – factors
that have a direct bearing on the nature of office and
multi-functional towers along with every other form
of building in the city.
What for Foster’s smaller towers
is an abstract urban model, is
for the Millennium and M towers
a practical way of accommodating
multiple functions and tens
of thousands of inhabitants.
Nevertheless, it is a fact that, while countless excellent
examples of the adaptation of other contemporary building
forms to local conditions can now be found in cities all
over the globe, tall buildings present special problems not
encountered in the design of smaller, low-rise types, where
historical models, including colonial architecture, offer clear
and useful guidance. Pyramids, pagodas and minarets aside,
prior to the first American skyscrapers there are simply
no relevant historical precedents for modern tall buildings
and the complex social and technological problems they
present. Like airports and other staples of twentieth-century
civilisation, the high-rise has had to be worked out from
scratch, and it has taken the better part of a century to
evolve into the well-adapted species represented by the
buildings discussed here.
In the light of recent global developments, it may also
be time to rethink the nature and origins of the type itself,
and to look beyond Chicago and New York, important as
they are in that history. In a collection of influential essays
by leading urbanists, The Design of Cities (2003), including
pieces by political economists like Castells and Harvey,
editor Alexander Cuthbert casts doubt on the work of more
conventional urban theorists focused exclusively on the
formal aspects of cities and their component structures.
He argues that no explanatory urban design theory worthy
of that description is complete if it does not account for the
effect of political and economic forces on urban form and
space. Much the same might also be said of the history
and evolution of tall buildings in the city, which are invariably
viewed as products of purely Western architectural and
urban traditions, which then just happen to have been
imposed on a gullible and submissive world elsewhere.
Far better, perhaps, to understand the sorts of high-rise
architecture described here, like the world cities of which
they are such an integral part, as concrete expressions
of an emergent world culture of the most extreme
complexity, with no single place or region of origin, West
or East. Existential roles of this order of importance are
not achieved by manipulations of form and space alone, as
some would have us believe, but only when a building plays
an active and meaningful part in the life of the city around
it, and in the larger world of which the city is in turn a part.
The genius loci these buildings exude derives, not from
any single dimension of space or meaning, but from the
integration and expression of many shifting dimensions
and geographies, both physical and mental, from the
‘furthest out’, to the ‘closest in’. It is a long way from either
the frozen images of earlier times and places that fill the
classic texts on urban design, or the repetitive ‘nowhere’
buildings generally associated with the type, neither
of which acknowledge the full range and dynamism of
modern urban experience. But as a guide to the future
it is a lot more promising.
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440 Norman Foster Works 5 High-rise and Genius Loci 441