Has any other contemporary designer 'signed' as many cityscapes as Norman Foster? Perhaps no architect since Christopher Wren has affected the London skyline so dramatically, from the Swiss Re 'gherkin' to the new Wembley Stadium arch. Foster has a right to be immodest, and the Catalogue of his work is punctuated with adjectives like 'first' and 'largest', and verbs like 'reinvent' and 'redefine'. Yet the multi-volume Works (there will be six books in all) borders on overkill, as if Foster wanted to outdo the tomes produced for more notorious peers such as Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas, whose offices seem like cottage industries in comparison with his.

LRB 22 June 2006 | PDF Download