‘Introduction’ to Norman Foster and Jorge Sainz (eds.), 'Norman Foster Sketchbooks: Volume V · 1996-2000'

Resumen

This text introduces de Volume V of the 'Norman Foster Sketchbooks' series.

This volume covers the years 1996-2000, with a total of 508 drawings taken from 100 sketchbooks. The previous half-decade closed with the fiasco of the first competition for the extension of the Prado Museum in Madrid, where Foster questioned the soundness of the imposed conditions. The next five years were marked by some milestones. Two of them coincided in 1999: the inauguration of the new Reichstag in Berlin and Foster winning the Pritzker Prize, the awarding ceremony for which also took place in Berlin, in two masterworks of architecture: Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie. The end of the period was flagged by the turn of the millennium, the year 2000, which prompted the planning of projects for London: a tower which was not built and a bridge which was, between the City and the new Tate Modern.