For Norman Foster's 90th birthday on 1 June we post the article "I discovered vernacular architecture through drawing," published in AV Monografías 235, in which the British master looked back on his life and career.

I discovered vernacular architecture through drawing
Norman Foster

The library of Manchester is arguably one of the most important buildings of my life in terms of influence. There I disovered Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture, the work of Henry-Russell Hitchcock on Frank Lloyd Wright… I discovered those worlds and they overlapped with a childhood world of sci - ence fiction, of space travel before space travel ever happened. The science fiction of my early youth was the reality that was to come later. In my recollection, the first sketch I drew was of an aircraft of heroic dimensions, and I was sitting at the controls and piloting it. I still find inspiration in those worlds that I did as a child. For me, these are not separate worlds. They fuse. I find it impossible to separate the worlds of design, objects, painting, sculpture, architecture… For me, it’s one world...

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