The current Norman Foster exhibition at the Pompidou Centre feels significant, not only for its size and firsts (biggest by area, number of projects, drawings never seen, all that), but for the fact Foster designed as well as headlines it. Reason enough to take a train to Paris. That, and the joy of a trip to the Pompidou.
Two French projects are celebrated from the off. On the front of the Pompidou Centre, there’s a giant photograph by Edmund Sumner of Marseille’s silver pavilion; then, at the entrance to the galleries, a wall-sized Daniel Jamme/Eiffage print of the Millau Viaduct.
Inside, the first room is an intimate salon hang of drawings around cabinets of open notebooks, a celebration of thinking with a pencil. I’m drawn to a concept for a development by the Fal estuary in Cornwall, proposed in 1965, the same time as the Creek Vean house was built. It imagines overlapping clusters of houses on a steep slope, just visible beneath the trees, and connected by footpaths – a romantic idea of buildings made to be reclaimed by nature that wasn’t shared by local planners.
Further along, a first go with gouache, attempted in the last couple of years. There are simple pleasures; a study of a table set up for lunch on wicker chairs under an awning. Then a façade detail for the Apple headquarters, with a note to David Nelson and Stefan Behling. These notes make interesting reading. There are thumbnails of pages with instructions for a film storyboard. On another double spread, a diary plan and precise to-do list dated 12th July 1979, Hong Kong. My favourite: “TALK TO STEEL MAN.”…
Read the full piece: https://www.bdonline.co.uk/briefing/review-norman-foster-at-the-centre-pompidou-definitive-for-now/5124290.article
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