Norman Foster is in high spirits as he strolls into a meeting room on the 15th floor of the HSBC Main Building on Hong Kong\u2019s Queen\u2019s Road Central.<\/p>\n
Flying into the city the previous evening, the 90-year-old British architect is in town to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a project that catapulted his firm from small-scale UK residences to global skyscrapers, airports and stadiums.<\/p>\n
In 1979, Foster and Partners won an international competition to design the fourth iteration of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation\u2019s headquarters in Hong Kong. Since then, the firm has been back for major projects including the Hong Kong International Airport and the West Kowloon Cultural District.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scale of the city has so changed. But the bank? It is remarkably unchanged. It has weathered 40 years,\u201d Foster says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHong Kong as a place \u2013 the street life, the traders, the diversity \u2013 it still has that can-do attitude,\u201d he adds. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s incredibly refreshing and stimulating to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/div>The original brief \u2013 to build no less than the best bank building in the world \u2013 allowed Foster and his team the opportunity to implement a number of radical ideas. The result was the first skyscraper to realise the utopian aspirations suggested by British architect Peter Cook and the influential Archigram architectural group he co-founded in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n