The Norman Foster Foundation Press presents ‘Unrealised Projects’, the latest instalment in the Norman Foster Foundation’s Conversation Series, featuring an interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Norman Foster on the topic of his unrealised projects, a recurring theme of exploration in Obrist’s career. The conversation, conducted in 2019, has been carefully transcribed and edited into written form. The book includes an introduction by Obrist who rightly points out that the subject of unrealised projects is often not well explored, even for architects such as Norman Foster.

Beginning with the early years of Foster’s career, the interview traces the various reasons why some projects remain unrealised—from politics and finances to misleading competition guidelines. It becomes clear that whilst a project may be unrealised, elements from its design can later be incorporated into built projects, sometimes even decades later.

This publication includes a small selection of drawings from the Norman Foster Foundation Archive that illustrate some of the unrealised projects that Foster and Obrist discuss. The result is a compact and personal telling of Norman Foster’s career from a different perspective, one which celebrates projects big and small, realised and unrealised.