Norman Foster

Awards & Honours

Awards Won

Honours

Records

The honours list here is short and each entry is heavy. The Pritzker in 1999 made Foster the 21st laureate, and he collected the RIBA Royal Gold Medal sixteen years earlier, in 1983, at an age when most architects are still waiting for a first significant commission. The AIA Gold Medal followed in 1994, giving him the top honour from both the British and American professional bodies. The state honours are equally direct: a knighthood in 1990 and a life peerage in 1999, which put a working architect into the House of Lords as Baron Foster of Thames Bank. Few practitioners in any field hold a comparable combination.

AwardsFoster holds the three prizes that define an architectural career: the RIBA Royal Gold Medal (1983), the AIA Gold Medal (1994) and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1999), where he was the 21st laureate. He was knighted in 1990 and elevated to the House of Lords in 1999 as Baron Foster of Thames Bank. He is also an Academy of Achievement honoree.

Honours & Distinctions

Knight Bachelor

United Kingdom·1990

Knighted for services to architecture.

Life peerage, Baron Foster of Thames Bank

House of Lords·1999

Created a life peer, of Reddish in the County of Greater Manchester.

Academy of Achievement honoree

American Academy of Achievement

Recognised for contributions to architecture and design.

Records & Feats

Youngest-ever Pritzker laureate at the time of award

Awards·1999

Foster was 64 when he received the prize in 1999, and the Pritzker jury cited him as the 21st laureate, a point at which the prize had gone to a small and select group.