Intouch Autumn/Winter 2007-08

A spirit of renewal

For 40 years, the architectural practice has established a reputation for breathtaking buildings and supreme innovation. But what does it take to keep a rapidly-growing professional practice continuously reinvigorated and refreshed?

Part of the answer lies in the ethos of the founder partner and Chairman, Norman Foster. As he puts it: “I’m motivated by challenge. I’m motivated by design. I’m motivated by the people around me who stimulate me. That’s the key to our success collectively and it’s the thing that drives me.

“You have to remember that we’ve gone way beyond architecture. We do infrastructure, project design, city planning, research. We’re changing all the time. That’s why we’re able to innovate, win awards, provide the level of service we do and attract the clients we’re fortunate to have. We’re always, if you like, reinventing ourselves.”

A key step in the firm’s evolution took place in 2004 when the 1,000-strong workforce was reorganised into six design groups – described by Lord Foster as “rather like companies in miniature that can do any kind of project anywhere in the world as long as they aren’t competing with each other”. These design groups have helped the firm deliver a step change in growth, under the watchful eye of a design board with a mandate to protect the Foster hallmarks: excellence, innovation and service.



Ownership and incentive
Towards the end of 2006, Lord Foster identified the need for further changes, to reflect powerful growth opportunities and provide new ways to incentivise talent. One of these changes involved broadening the firm’s ownership by creating ten new shareholders, many of whom were existing members of the management team. As Lord Foster observes: “These key individuals have been working together as a team for 12, 15, 20 years – and in some cases, longer.

“In a way, it’s formalising something that’s already been working for a long time. It’s giving validity to that and it’s also setting the stage for the long term. Through our new ‘equity warehouse’, ownership will become a tangible feature of a career path – a way for us to reward up-and-coming architects over the coming years.”

One of the new management shareholders, Mouzhan Majidi, has become Foster + Partners’ CEO, taking up many of the day-to-day leadership responsibilities and leaving Lord Foster free to return to his roots: “I’ve never ceased designing but I will have more freedom to design. I will also have more freedom as an entrepreneur. I enjoy the challenge of new markets, of new building types. At the same time, as Chairman, I’ll continue to do what I’ve been doing – nurturing talent, bringing people forward and giving them greater responsibility.”

A partnership for growth
As well as the new management shareholders, May 2007 also saw a first for Foster + Partners: a new external shareholder, 3i. Why did Lord Foster feel that the time was right for an external investor and what led him to choose 3i? “Well, first of all, 3i is not a normal outside investor. There is a financial dimension to it, and after 40 years we really needed to broaden our financial base – but we’ve been very fortunate because we’ve found an investor that’s really quite special, an investor that shares our own agenda through parallel, long-term interests in infrastructure and new markets in Asia. That makes it very much a partnership.”



Mouzhan Majidi is enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by the affiliation with 3i: “Their culture is very similar to our culture and they’re interested in the regions we want to enter. They have the contacts and the infrastructure, so it's really a good marriage between the two firms.

I don't expect anything to change in the day-to-day running of the business but at the strategic level, we will be working together to expand. “Recently we’ve broken into growth markets like Russia, the Middle East and China. We’ve done a number of projects and we now want to set up regional offices and expand in those markets and elsewhere. We’re looking at India, we’re looking at Vietnam – all new markets that we’re currently getting into.

“Bear in mind that the global market for architects is worth around €130bn. If you take the ten largest global architecture firms, including Foster + Partners, their market share is less than 1% of the total – so we’re talking about a very small market share. We aim to double our turnover in the next five years and with that double the size of the firm.”

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