Defying gravity

Norman Foster gave London dizzying skyscrapers, head-turning apartment blocks and a bridge of light, as well as championing compact city living and piloting aeroplanes. Carla Passino meets the man with his head in the clouds

- Carla Passino

THE Thames looms large on the horizon, an olive-green canvas that fills the view from the huge glass windows at Foster + Partners. It is to the river and the pockets of trees beyond it that Norman Foster turns his eyes so mobile that it's hard to tell their colour-to reveal London's DNA, that series of individual villages and green spaces that have morphed into a city. 'London is essentially organic. It's not gridded on a right angle, like New York. It's not on grand axes like Paris; it has this meandering river, which is as meandering as the organic communities I'm talking about.'