The new body was established with the Greater London Act of 1999 and officially formed in 2000. Two years later, the Greater London Authority would get a new home with the simply-named City Hall. A futuristic-looking building, it houses the offices for the Mayor, the London Assembly, and numerous city departments. The City of London is located in Laurel County, Ky. With over 8,000 residents, London has been named the Cycling Capital of Kentucky, Kentucky's 5th official Trail Town, has been certified as a Tree City by Tree City USA, and annually hosts the World Chicken Festival.
The architecture of the British (born 1935) is known not only for its 'high-tech' modernism, but also for being some of the first large-scale energy-sensitive designs in the world. Norman Foster buildings establish an exciting presence wherever they are built — in Bilbao, Spain the welcoming canopies of the metro stations built in 1995 are known as 'Fosteritos,' which means 'Little Fosters' in Spanish; the inside of the 1999 Reichstag dome has attracted long lines of tourists who come to see 360-degree views of Berlin, Germany. As you view the photos in this gallery, you'll notice a use of factory-made modular elements assembled into space-age-like structures combined with environmental sensitivies and green architecture sensibilities.This is the aesthetic of Foster + Partners. Not long after founding Foster Associates in 1967, Norman Foster and his partner wife Wendy Cheesman began to design a 'garden in the sky' for the ordinary office worker of Ipswich, England.
The global insurance firm Willis Faber & Dumas, Ltd. Commissioned the young firm to create what Foster describes as a 'low-rise, with a free-form plan.' The dark glass siding 'curves in response to the irregular medieval street pattern, flowing to the edges of its site like a pancake in a pan.' Completed in 1975, the innovative building now known simply as the Willis Building in Ipswich — in 2008, Foster built a much different Willis Building in London — was ahead of its time with a park-like green roof for the enjoyment of the office worker occupants. ' And here, the first thing you can see is that this building, the roof is a very warm kind of overcoat blanket, a kind of insulating garden, which is also about the celebration of public space. In other words, for this community, they have this garden in the sky.
So the humanistic ideal is very, very strong in all this work.And nature is part of the generator, the driver for this building. And symbolically, the colors of the interior are green and yellow. It has facilities like swimming pools, it has flextime, it has a social heart, a space, you have contact with nature. Now this was 1973.' — Norman Foster. Norman Foster's architecture is as much known for its high-tech lighting as it is for its sustainability and use of light within open spaces.
The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank headquarters, at 587 feet (179 meters), was Foster's first project in Hong Kong, China — and perhaps his introduction to a 'feng shui geomancer.' Completed in 1986, the building's construction was accomplished by using prefabricated parts and an open floor plan that over the years has proven to be flexible enough to accommodate changing work practices. Unlike many modern office buildings whose services (e.g., elevators) are in the center of the building, Foster designed the center of HSBC to be a 10-story atrium filled with natural light, ventilation, and open work areas. At 850 feet (259 meters), the 56-story Commerzbank was once the tallest building in Europe. The 1997 skyscraper overlooking the Main River in Frankfort, Germany has always been ahead of its time. Often considered ' the world's first ecological office tower,' Commerzbank is triangular in shape with a center glass atrium allowing natural light to surround every floor — an idea firmly established a decade earlier with HSBC in Hong Kong, China. In Germany Foster's architecture is so popular that reservations for are taken months in advance.
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In 2013 Foster's firm completed the SSE Hydro (seen here on the right) for use as a smaller performance venue. The interior has fixed and retractable elements that can be arranged to accommodate a variety of events, including rock concerts and sports events. Like the SECC next door, the exterior is highly reflective, but not by using alumininum: The SSE Hydro is clad in a 21st century plastic product used by many forward-thinking architects. Before the Glasgow project, Foster had completed that would have been impossible to build without ETFE.