It is night and I am taking a taxi back through the desert from Norman Foster’s carbon-neutral Masdar City. We are lost, idling on a back road on Yas Island, behind Ferrari World, a racetrack and what claims to be the largest indoor amusement park in the world. My taxi driver, a Syrian, calls for directions to the hotel. I step out of the car. The only sound is the rustling of the desert wind and behind it the call of wading birds on a nearby lagoon. The smell is of tarmac. The underside of the sky glimmers with oil flares. On the horizon is the centre of Abu Dhabi – a rectangular smudge.
No wonder we got lost, I think, when we finally get to the hotel. It is no place, or more precisely its sense of place is redundant. It hovers, brightly lit, seemingly untenanted. The windows of my room do not open. I think, this building is not a Foster building, not by a long shot. I sit at the desk in my room and make notes about Masdar, Foster, ‘sustainability’ and ‘resilience’, and I can clearly imagine the architect anatomising this nowhere, his soft Mancunian burr, amiable, yet precise. Foster thinks we’ll build cities higher, closer, safer, quieter, cleaner and smarter. I want to believe him, but then I think about Africa and what is coming there.
The Foster + Partners studio, on the south bank of the Thames between Albert and Battersea Bridges, is both busy and austere. A Nordic hospital, I thought when I wandered in, but this may only be because I live in Africa and have become attuned to tropical vegetation and mess. In any case, the coolness is offset by the vitality of the young architects with their espressos propped up along a long, narrow counter by the entrance. Foster + Partners is a magnet for young talent. They work harder for less money than at some other firms, but, like a trainee in a Michelin-starred restaurant, they learn from the best. Foster says the firm is his greatest achievement. It is supple, youthful, and even though apprentices fly easyJet while the master pilots into London from his home in Switzerland in his own plane, there is a sense of common purpose. In this, Foster builds what he preaches...[+]
