Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, is an English architect whose company, Foster + Partners, maintains an international design practice. He is the President of the Norman Foster Foundation; the Norman Foster Foundation promotes interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects and urbanists to anticipate the future. The foundation, which opened in June 2017, operates globally, he is one of the most prolific British architects of his generation. In 1999, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture. Norman Robert Foster was born in 1935 in Reddish, two miles north of Stockport a part of Cheshire; the only child of Robert and Lilian Foster, the family moved to Levenshulme, near Manchester, where they lived in poverty. His father was a machine painter at the Metropolitan-Vickers works in Trafford Park which influenced him to take up engineering, to pursue a career designing buildings, his mother worked in a local bakery.

Foster's parents were diligent and hard workers who had neighbours and family members look after their son, which Foster believed restricted his relationship with his mother and father. Foster attended Burnage Grammar School for Boys in Burnage, where he was bullied by fellow pupils and took up reading, he considered himself awkward in his early years. At 16, he left school and passed an entrance exam for a trainee scheme set up by Manchester Town Hall, which led to his first job, an office junior and clerk in the treasurer's department. In 1953, Foster completed his national service in the Royal Air Force, choosing the air force because aircraft had been a longtime hobby. Upon returning to Manchester, Foster went against his parents' wishes and sought employment elsewhere, he had seven O-Levels by this time, applied to work at a duplicating machine company, telling the interviewer he had applied for the prospect of a company car and a £1,000 salary. Instead, he became an assistant to a contract manager at a local architects, John E. Beardshaw and Partners.

The staff advised him, that if he wished to become an architect, he should prepare a portfolio of drawings using the perspective and shop drawings from Beardshaw's practice as an example. Beardshaw was so impressed with Foster's drawings. In 1956, Foster began study at the School of Architecture and City Planning, part of the University of Manchester, he was ineligible for a maintenance grant, so he took part-time jobs to fund his studies, including an ice-cream salesman and night shifts at a bakery making crumpets. During this time, he studied at the local library in Levenshulme, his talent and hard work was recognised in 1959 when he won £100 and a RIBA silver medal for what he described as "a measured drawing of a windmill". After graduating in 1961, Foster won the Henry Fellowship to Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, where he met future business partner Richard Rogers and earned his master's degree. At the suggestion of Vincent Scully, the pair travelled across America for a year.

In 1963, Foster returned to England and established his own an architectural practice, Team 4, with Rogers, Su Brumwell, sisters Georgie and Wendy Cheesman. The team earned a reputation for their high-tech industrial designs. After the four separated in 1967, Foster and Wendy founded Foster Associates. From 1968 to 1983, Foster collaborated with American architect Richard Buckminster Fuller on several projects that became catalysts in the development of an environmentally sensitive approach to design, such as the Samuel Beckett Theatre at St Peter's College, Oxford. In 1999, the company was renamed Foster + Partners. Foster Associates concentrated on industrial buildings until 1969, when the practice worked on the administrative and leisure centre for Fred. Olsen Lines based in the London Docklands, which integrated workers and managers within the same office space, its breakthrough building in England followed in 1974 with the completion of the Willis Faber & Dumas headquarters in Ipswich. The client was a family run insurance company that wanted to restore a sense of community to the workplace.

Foster created open plan office floors, long before open-plan became the norm, placed a roof garden, 25-metre swimming pool, gymnasium in the building to enhance the quality of life for the company's 1,200 employees. The building has a full-height glass façade moulded to the medieval street plan and contributes drama, subtly shifting from opaque, reflective black to a glowing back-lit transparency as the sun sets; the design was inspired by the Daily Express Building in Manchester that Foster had admired as a youngster. The building is now Grade I* listed; the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, an art gallery and museum on the campus of the University of East Anglia, was one of the first major public buildings to be designed by Foster, completed in 1978, became grade II* listed in December 2012. In 1990 Foster's design for the Terminal Building at London Stansted Airport was awarded the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe Award. Foster gained a reputation for designing office buildings.

In the 1980s he designed the HSBC Main Building in Hong Kong for HSBC. The building is marked by its high level of light transparency, as all 3500 workers have a view to Victoria Peak or Victoria Harbour. Foster said that if the firm had not won the contract it would have been bankrupted. Foster believes that attracting young talent is essential, is proud that the average age of people working for Foster and Partners is 32, just like it was in 1967. Foster was assigned the brief for a develop

Lemuria-Seascape is an album by pianist Kenny Barron, recorded in early 1991 and released on the Candid label. In his review on Allmusic, Ron Wynn stated "The Barron/Drummond/Riley trio step forward into the'90s and churn out another impressive collection, this one containing either Barron or group originals rather than tons of standards. Exacting constructed, brilliant playing all around". All compositions by Kenny Barron except. "Lemuria" - 4:36 "Ask Me Now" – 5:31 "Sweet Lorraine" – 7:19 "Fungii Mama" – 5:44 "Slow Grind" - 5:19 "Have You Met Miss Jones?" – 5:11 "Maria Isabel" – 6:36 "You Go to My Head" – 9:01 "The Magical Look in Your Eyes" – 7:40 "Seascape" - 5:31 Kenny Barron – piano Ray Drummond – bass Ben Riley – drums

North Shore City Council v Auckland Regional Council was a case in the Environment Court of New Zealand concerning the proper interpretation of section five of the Resource Management Act 1991 by planning bodies. The Auckland Regional Council had publicly notified its proposed regional policy statement in early 1994 which would have restricted urban development with a line of metropolitan urban limits; the appellants, the North Shore City Council and the owners of land in the area around Long Bay and Okura River sought to modify the metropolitan urban limits so that an area of some 700 hectares in the area would be zoned within the urban limit The Environment Court allowed the appeals in part, "to the extent that the regional council is directed to alter the line of metropolitan urban limits in the proposed regional policy statement so that instead of following Glenvar Road, the line follows the watershed or catchment boundary between the Long Bay and Okura catchments." In coming to this determination the Court had decided that, "We have concluded that urbanisation of the part of the subject land in the Okura catchment would have significant adverse effects on the environment of the Okura Estuary, that the estuary, its high quality waters and ecosystem, possesses life supporting capacity which deserve to be safeguarded.

However we have not accepted that there would be significant adverse effects of urbanisation on the environment of the Long Bay coast, or on the marine life of the marine reserves." In coming to its decision the Court had regard to section 5 of the Resource Management Act which states the Act's purpose as promoting sustainable management. The Court held:"The method of applying s 5 involves an overall broad judgment of whether a proposal would promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources; that recognises. Such a judgment allows for comparison of conflicting considerations and the scale or degree of them, their relative significance or proportion in the final outcome." The case established the "overall board judgment" approach to interpretation of section 5 of the Resource Management Act. In the 2014 decision, Environmental Defence Society v New Zealand King Salmon the Supreme Court declined to follow the "overall broad judgment" approach