Word: designers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Every other school--business, dental, design, divinity, the Kennedy School of Government, law, medical, education and public health--has reached its original goal. With their new funds and what FAS has accumulated so far, Harvard has pulled in $1.98 billion since the start of the campaign...
...would reapply the lesson himself 11 years later in his $20 billion design for the world's largest airport, at Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong--the last megastructure spawned by the floundering "tiger economies" of Asia. Foster envisaged it as a "horizontal cathedral," with its airy, Y-shaped passenger terminal under the great wing of its roof. It had teething troubles at first--there were cargo and passenger delays when it opened last July--but now, according to Wan Wai Lun, corporate affairs officer of the Hong Kong Airport Authority, "it's incredibly efficient and caters to the passengers...
...ideal of humane efficiency, understood as social responsibility, undergirds all of Foster's work. No living architect has thought more closely about the ecological effects of his buildings. In his brilliant 1991 design for Frankfurt's Commerzbank, the tallest office building in Europe, he brought off the seemingly impossible feat of building a supertower that could use natural ventilation (as against fuel-gobbling air conditioning) during 60% of the year. "Anything that reduces energy consumption and cuts down on greenhouse gases is good news," he says. In his redesign of the Reichstag, the seat of German government in Berlin, Foster...
...course, do a building that's eco-responsible but aesthetically worthless. The crux of Foster's achievement is to have designed megastructures that are at the forefront of eco-design as well as beautiful in their own right. He is a fine detailer--everything from the junctures of a beam to the cladding to the door handles comes out of the same relentless aesthetic concentration. But on the wider scale, Foster is also one of the great living manipulators of light and transparency. No other government building in the world, for instance, can boast anything as outright exhilarating...
AMUSE YOURSELF This summer you can skip the long lines and outrageous prices at theme parks and design your own instead. The Legoland CD-ROM ($30, available in July) lets kids ages six and up build castles, waterways and monuments, then see how "visitors" like their design. If roller coasters are more your speed, Microprose's RollerCoaster Tycoon ($30, available now) lets you build fantasy rides, carousels and haunted houses. But don't forget the snack stands; hungry patrons can get grumpy...