The Art of Architecture: Foster + Partners

Start date: Saturday, September 26, 2009
Event is ongoing: Until Sunday, January 10, 2010

Continuing its investigation of contemporary architecture, the Nasher Sculpture Center will present the first U.S. retrospective of the work of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Norman Foster and his architectural firm, Foster + Partners, September 26, 2009 through January 10, 2010.

Scheduled to coincide with the grand opening of the new, Foster-designed Winspear Opera House in the Dallas Center for Performing Arts, the exhibition will explore Foster + Partners’ major architectural achievements of a practice that spans the past four decades. Architectural models, along with drawings, renderings, photographs, and videos, will give insight into the formal and conceptual underpinnings of Foster + Partners’ architecture and provide context for better understanding their new contribution to the panoply of modernist architecture in Dallas.

“The Nasher is pleased to present an exhibition which showcases Foster + Partner’s greatest architectural works and explores the firm’s philosophy that the quality of surroundings has a direct influence on the quality of lives and the culture and climate of place,” said Jeremy Strick, Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center. “With the opening of the Foster-designed Winspear Opera House, Dallas will be the only city in the world that has four buildings within one contiguous block designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize winners, including the Renzo Piano-designed Nasher Sculpture Center.”

Foster + Partners’ philosophy was born out of early experimental projects undertaken with R. Buckminster Fuller in the 1970s that attempted to align the built environment more closely with natural forms and processes. Focusing on cultural buildings and civic spaces, as well as select infrastructure projects, The Art of Architecture: Foster + Partners will present important milestones in the firm’s practice that reflect its emphases on structural innovation and sustainable design and provide important precedents for the Winspear Opera House. The exhibition will feature some of the largest and most notable structures in the world, including the Great Court at the British Museum, the Reichstag in Berlin, Trafalgar Square in London, and the new Terminal 3 at the Beijing International Airport.