Norman Foster interview: Sainsbury Centre had crisis moments | Architecture | Dezeen

British architect Norman Foster recalls the challenges of designing the UK's pioneering high-tech art gallery, in this exclusive video interview filmed by Dezeen as part of our high-tech architecture series.
Located on the campus of the University of East Anglia in Norfolk, UK, the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts is a 135-metre-long lattice steel structure with glazing at each end.
Completed in 1978, it was the first public building designed by Foster Associates - the architecture practice founded by Foster and his wife Wendy, which is now called Foster + Partners.
The gallery takes its name from the supermarket owners Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, who commissioned the building to house their extensive art collection alongside the University of East Anglia's art faculty.
With works spanning 5,000 years of creative history and ranging from Henry Moore sculptures to cultural artefacts from Asia and Africa, the collection operates as both an ancillary to the art school and a public exhibition space.
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[@trogmite]

I was in that first cohort to inhabit the building when it opened to FAM students in the Summer term of 1978. How I laughed as lecturers had to get down on their knees to put their keys into the locks for their rooms - which were set into the floor. How we all laughed as a seminar group tried to squeeze into wee rooms, which had not taken into account the fact that the walls would have bookshelves because - you know - the lecturers had books. How I laughed as the lecturers expressed murderous impulses at the way in which we had to operate. The building was just too beautiful for humans. I recall having to twist this way and that to study the slides for my seminars in the slide library, as the south west facing building got hit by the sun. Oh - and the static electricity you got meant that we all learnt to wander around touching metal surfaces at intervals, so that we didn't get a kick like a deranged donkey. And we watched as yet another group of design journalists would enter, be swept up to the mezzanine for wine and nibbles - and then go away and pen panegyrics about the brilliance of the design. Beautiful to look at and impractical within.

[@muqades101]

I started studying there too, for the building and access to artefacts before I realised most of the lectures were held in an old billiards room underneath the building 😒 they dont even provide desk for us to write on!

[@stevecooper3010]

Good to hear feedback from the end user
What you reckon Norm.

[@andrewwebb9426]

Bit late to add my comment, I know. Just wanted to say that on every visit the main floor and the upper floors are lovely places: the right temperature, the right light and lovely fresh air. The restaurant, in particular, is spectacular. The downstairs for us visitors, however, is pokey and not all that attractive: narrow corridors and low ceilings.

[@aryabod1700]

exquisite content.

[@kathymcbride2425]

love the place x

[@YelloBeam]

Big container

[@chriskundi5512]

Wow mate what an achievement lets play with Lego these crap objects you created wow you really are a genius if I were that engineer I would vomited over your plans

[@planetarytiger]

turn a window into a domicile!? cool!