Norman Foster’s ‘Factory of Fine Design’ ⇥ newyorker.com

Ian Parker, the New Yorker:

To build a very large operation that still resembles a boutique one required decades of sustained control. Foster has controlled the work, and controlled his image, and controlled the images made by him: a Foster + Partners project will almost always have its accompanying Norman Foster sketches, often made retrospectively, rather than in the heat of design. They’ll be annotated by Foster, in a spiky hand that some of his colleagues have learned to imitate. These images may show a building’s future users spreading their arms above their heads, in a gesture of joyous abandon that it’s hard to imagine Foster ever having made.

I know I just wrote about the mistakes of idolizing business leaders. True enough, there are some pretty odious people named in this article, and some of Foster’s more aspirational qualities are called into question. This is a great profile nonetheless: well-written, comprehensive, and full of wonderful details.

Parker was, fittingly, also the author of a similarly comprehensive profile of Jony Ive, published ten years ago this month.