AJ100 International Practice of the Year 2020 revealed

'There’s a description of Foster + Partners as bringing together an orchestra,’ said our judges of this year’s winner of the International Practice accolade. ‘It’s a good analogy. Just as an orchestra requires musicians to bring together different skills, so Fosters has been remarkable in bringing together its expertise, including structural engineering and sustainability.’

With more than 80 projects under construction in more than 50 international cities, the Fosters international strategy, and the sheer scale of the business, is stronger than ever.

Norman Foster's practice has won 20 new schemes over the past year, and has an increasing presence on the west coast of the USA. A massive 91 per cent of its earnings comes from international work (only nine per cent of its projects are in the UK). Its strongest markets are Asia, North America and the Middle East, while new areas of construction include Eastern Europe and South America.

Projects are many and varied: from Abu Dhabi’s Central Market, addressing a climate of extreme heat; to San Francisco, where the Oceanwide Center is about designing in a seismic zone; to the vernacular in Switzerland (Kulm Eispavillon St Moritz); to an isolated villa scheme on a peninsula in Turkey, created in collaboration with local craftspeople.

Fosters’ work on the JP Morgan global headquarters in New York, Park Avenue, is an example of the practice’s engineering ability. With the NYC subway running underneath the site, the engineering solution – of loads transferring down into a single point – defined the architectural language of the building. La Fábrica in Santiago in Chile is at the other end of the scale. Here, Fosters has been invited to reimagine an area of land on a former fabric factory, and this timber-based project knitted into the urban realm will be low-rise, with small residential units and internal courtyards and streets.

The judges were impressed with the level of repeat work, most notably with Apple, and by the practice’s ability to maintain consistency and quality across so many offices. With an optimum international office size of about 50 people, there is considerable knowledge-sharing between locations and a continual process of design iteration. Sixty-seven languages are spoken across this network of offices.

Fosters has a dedicated sustainability group and is now addressing calculation of the embodied carbon on its projects. ‘The Fosters model gives an amazing set of buildings around the world for a British company,’ enthused the judges.

‘They go into a culture and understand it and try and design with it, rather than just impose. Sustainability is embedded in Fosters.’

Foster + Partners was chosen for the title ahead of Grimshaw and Zaha Hadid Archtiects.

The announcement was made on the third day of the virtual, week-long, free-to-watch AJ100 Festival, which runs until Friday (18 September).

We are delighted to have won ‘International Practice of the Year' at this year's @ArchJrnal100 Festival. pic.twitter.com/UsYrFNlwDV

— Foster + Partners (@FosterPartners) September 16, 2020

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