Norman Foster's Reichstag dome opens to the Bundestag

An architectural commission is rarely won by a British architect for the central-political-building of a newly-reunified-foreign-nation in the architectural-design-competition against the best-of-the-international-architectural-competition field. The Reichstag-reconstruction-competition of 1992 was the political-and-architectural-test-case of the post-1990-German-reunification: the Bonn-to-Berlin federal-capital-relocation decision of the 1991 Bundestag-vote had committed the German-federal-government to the Berlin-relocation, and the Reichstag-building reconstruction was the central single architectural-element of the Berlin-relocation-programme.

THE MANCHESTER BOY

Norman Robert Foster was born at 23 Crocus Street in the working-class Levenshulme district of southern Manchester on the first of June 1935, only child of Robert Foster, a Manchester-Ferranti-Engineering electrical-engineer, and Lilian Smith. He was raised in the Levenshulme-and-Reddish working-class south-Manchester terraced-housing, was schooled at Burnage Grammar School in southern Manchester, and on the 1951 school-leaving-at-sixteen took the Manchester Town Hall junior-treasurer's-office clerkship as the first-employment. He completed the 1953-to-1956 National-Service in the Royal Air Force (the RAF Padgate-Eastleigh postings of the RAF Education-Branch on the aircraft-electronics training-and-instructor-position), and on the 1956 RAF-discharge took the Manchester architectural-firm John E. Beardshaw and Partners junior-architectural-assistant position in his twenty-first year.

He took the Manchester University architectural-degree across 1956 to 1961 on the self-funded part-time-and-full-time-architectural-school arrangement (Foster took the Manchester architectural-degree on his own resources from his Beardshaw-and-Partners architectural-assistant salary across the five-year part-time-and-full-time mix-arrangement, the foundational working-class architectural-degree-route of his generation), graduated with the first-class-honours architectural-degree in 1961 in his twenty-sixth year, won the Henry Fellowship to Yale University Graduate School of Architecture on the strength of the Manchester-degree, and took the Master of Architecture degree at Yale across 1961-1962 under the faculty of Paul Rudolph and Vincent Scully.

TEAM 4 AND FOSTER + PARTNERS

He co-founded the Team 4 architectural-partnership at London in 1963 with Richard Rogers, Su Brumwell and Wendy Cheesman (Foster's Yale-Graduate-School classmate, his future first-wife from 1964 marriage, and his Foster-Partners co-founder), took the Team-4 early-architectural-commissions across the 1963-to-1967 period (the Reliance Controls factory at Swindon 1965, the Creek Vean House at Feock in Cornwall 1966), and on the 1967 Team-4-dissolution co-founded the Foster-Associates architectural-partnership with Wendy Cheesman in 1967, in his thirty-second year. The Foster-Associates partnership (renamed Foster + Partners in 1992) has been the Foster architectural-firm continuously to the present.

He took the leading-international-architectural-commissions across the 1970s-to-1990s Foster-Associates-and-Foster-Partners career: the Willis Faber and Dumas insurance-headquarters at Ipswich (1975), the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia at Norwich (1978), the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Headquarters at Hong Kong (1985, the Hong Kong-and-Shanghai-Bank-tower that became the foundational-Foster international-recognition project), the Renault Distribution Centre at Swindon (1982), the Stansted Airport Terminal at London Stansted Airport (1991), and the Carre d'Art-Mediatheque at Nimes in France (1993).

THE REICHSTAG COMMISSION

The Bundestag Council convened the Reichstag-reconstruction-architectural-competition in late 1992 on the Bonn-to-Berlin federal-capital-relocation decision of the twentieth of June 1991 Bundestag-vote. The competition opened in March 1992 with the eighty-international-architectural-firm invited-shortlist; the competition-shortlist of three architectural-firms was identified in October 1992 as Foster + Partners (the Foster-team submission), Pi de Bruijn (Dutch architectural-firm), and Santiago Calatrava (Spanish-Swiss architectural-firm). The jury-decision in February 1993 selected the Foster-Partners submission on the strength of the glass-dome-and-walkable-observation-deck design that put the democratic-public physically-above the Bundestag-parliamentary-chamber.

Foster's original-1992 submission did not include the walkable-observation-dome; the original-Foster-submission had proposed a flat-roof reconstruction. The walkable-observation-dome design was added by Foster in the 1993-design-development phase on the Bundestag-jury request that the reconstruction include a visible-democratic-symbol of the public-political-engagement above the parliamentary-chamber. Foster developed the double-spiral inverted-cone forty-metre-diameter glass-and-steel walkable-observation-dome design across the 1993-to-1995 Foster-Partners design-development phase, with the double-spiral public-ramp that admitted approximately three thousand public-visitors per day to the walkable dome-interior.

THE NINETEENTH OF APRIL

The Reichstag-reconstruction-construction ran across the 1995-to-1999 Foster-Partners on-site construction-period under the Foster-Partners on-site project-architect Mark Braun and the German-contractor consortium. The construction was completed on the fifteenth of April 1999, and the formal opening-ceremony was held on the morning of the nineteenth-of-April 1999 in the newly-reconstructed Bundestag-chamber. The Federal-President Roman Herzog and the Chancellor Gerhard Schröder presided over the Bundestag-formal-opening-session; Foster was present in the official-architectural-guest-position alongside the Bundestag-Council Vice-President Wolfgang Thierse.

The walkable-observation-dome opened to the public on the same morning of the nineteenth of April 1999 with the first public-visitor admission at the eleven-AM public-opening-time. The public has continued to walk the dome continuously since the 1999 opening at the three-thousand-visitors-per-day rate (approximately one million visitors per year, the most-visited single architectural-site in modern Berlin). The Bundestag has met in the reconstructed Reichstag-chamber continuously since the 1999 opening.

THE STANDING-FOSTER LATER CAREER

Foster was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1983 in his forty-eighth year, was knighted in 1990, was created Baron Foster of Thames Bank in 1999 (the life-peerage that came with the Reichstag-completion), was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1999 (the international architectural-profession's highest single recognition, awarded in the same year as the Reichstag opening), and was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1997. He has continued to lead Foster + Partners across the twenty-six years since the Reichstag opening, has produced the major-architectural-commissions of the 2000s-and-2010s (the Millennium Bridge at London (2000), the Swiss Re Building at London known as the Gherkin (2004), the Wembley Stadium reconstruction at London (2007), the Apple Park headquarters at Cupertino California (2017)), and remains the leading single living British architect of his generation. The Foster name in modern world architecture carries the weight of the morning at the Reichstag on the nineteenth of April 1999.