Lisa, I was just telling Lord Foster how excited and giddy I am for this beautiful moment. As a young 10-year-old standing and taking the Star Ferry across the harbor watching this building rise, it's extremely honorable to have you with us, Lord Foster, today. So again, a round of applause to reduce my nervousness. So to the Honorable Lord Norman Foster, welcome back to Hong Kong and in Central on this special occasion of the 40th anniversary of the HSBC 4th generation building, since HSBC was founded in 1865. And immense gratitude for all you have achieved, continue to champion, and create for us here in Hong Kong with such imagination and innovation. So thank you again. It's an immense honor for all of us here in Hong Kong to have this opportunity to be seated, to stand with you. Design Trusts are a very incredible, dynamic, young, energetic registered charity founded in 2007 as Hong Kong Ambassador Design, more active I would say in the last 12 years, with the sincere mission to nurture and provide support to early career designers, grantees, architects, scholars, and fellows to study the built environment, from graphics such as you see the amazing Dr. Henry Stein. Also a round of applause for your wonderful individual present. We've also been building lots of festivals in Hong Kong free to the public in the community, like Inter Island Open House Hong Kong, making archives relevant, you know, with Mrs. Penelope Sidler also seated here with us, flying from Sydney, a dear friend of yours present. It's been a really exciting way to look at all your legacy and your work to inspire our nonprofit's purpose. So thank you again. We've been building all these little micro parks in Hong Kong with Design Trust Future Studios, matching mentors and mentees, also inspired by your ethos, and you are a leading innovator and so much part of our inspiration. So thank you. You'll see the slides behind us afterwards for all our guests spending time with us this morning. We've been looking at the art of movement, unpacking this question of how Foster has generated this artistic movement of culture, bringing people together, the networks, the community. And you know, with now the show on St. John's building up till April 12th, it's at the foot of the Peak Terminus, and we have been examining 1970s, 80s Central architecture and looking at how important philanthropists, patrons, architects like yourself and commissioners articulated that 1979 competition document you had to elevate the purpose of this bank, the commitment to Hong Kong's future, and also the sheer commitment of everyone and the confidence to celebrate Hong Kong not only as a city of an engine of generosity like yourself but an architecture innovation. So without your remarkable mark, I don't know if we could speak with such generosity and philosophy, but to create this beautiful event would not be possible without HSBC. So Mr. Chuck Sum, thank you so much for all your support. Miss Anna Tuah, head of brand, and also all her colleagues, and especially Mr. David Liala, the co-chief executive of Asia Middle East for their support. So with a lot of individuals here to thank, my board members present JC Camps and Denise, there's also trustees present with us, Joanne Chow, Angelina, there are many here today that support the foundation, and I would love, love, love this moment to also present you our Design Trust Legacy Award 2026 and invite you all as well for Lord Foster to give us a few comments, a short dialogue, and also very important for our archives to document photographs of this moment. And maybe if I can invite you to stand.
And accept this award on behalf of our foundation Design Trust to Lord Norman Foster for your incredible contributions to the world of architecture and Hong Kong. I think Hong Kong is Norman Foster's city. Yeah. Thank you. Let's take a quick photo. Can you?
If you want, if you want to step forward?
It's by an artisanal glassblower from Hong Kong, shaped as a bamboo, representing longevity and resilience and also your love for the blue and green economy. So may I kindly invite you to say a few words?
Well, first of all, I'm delighted and honored to receive this award. Every time I arrive in Hong Kong, my pulse quickens. There's an extraordinary anticipation. It has a kind of unique DNA as a city, and it's palpable, and I get that same rush of excitement that I did way back in 1979. I remember at that time writing the report for the competition and kind of anticipating the prospect of what then would be the tallest building in Hong Kong. I remember doing a diagram and saying it's not about being the tallest. It's quite interesting to come back decades later and find the building with its presence. For me, that resonates. It's not about being the tallest. It's remarkable the way it commands the frontage out to the water. Coming back and finding the building as alive and well and so beautifully maintained, and to see those original details that I remember sketching. But I'm making this sound very personal, and of course it's a very personal occasion.
But it's also a reminder that architecture and this building, perhaps more than any building I know, is an extraordinary team venture. It was, I think, the true creative act going back then and thinking to the chairman Michael Sandberg with the mandate to do the best bank building in the world. Coming here, it's still interestingly the same sentiments. As I come from Europe where everybody is talking about doing things, and coming here it's action, things happen. People talk about it but they do it, and I'm finding the same equivalence now as I did then. A highway going to Macau, 55 kilometers just over the water, it's kind of taken for granted, but it's a very different attitude of mind. For me it's invigorating. When I come here, I'm stimulated, I'm charged, I'm optimistic about the future. So I could go on at length, but I would come back to the architecture and this building as a team activity. I was just going through a list from the practice, and I counted and there were a hundred names. For every one of those hundred names, some of them are here, David Nelson and other familiar faces, that extraordinary team. At that time, there wasn't here in Hong Kong the same manufacturing capability which we now perhaps wonderfully take for granted. At that time, everything was packaged, prefabricated, shipped in, which explains the remarkably fast construction time for this building, which even by today's standards is remarkably fast. These elements were shipped in from all around the world, and those of us who were active on the project were moving around the world engaging with those subcontractors. I remember all the bamboo scaffolding and the tales of the way in which the bamboo scaffolding would work with nature and was superior to the modern equivalent. So it was a wonderful melange. As I say, to come back here and find that original fabric, that architecture so alive and well and so wonderfully looked after, is really quite moving for me. Very moving indeed.
Great. I wonder if we can pull up this beautiful slide of Lord Norman Foster's team. At that time, there's a small liaison office established as early as January 1980, Spencer de Gray, Graeme Phillips. I also have this beautiful old photograph of yourself with your team. This is something I'm just so impressed and inspired by, your leadership. The way you can build from a very small group of yourself or a hundred members to now 2,000 members. I mean, of course, David Nelson, thank you so much for returning from London. A big applause to your colleague also. Mr. Hardy Lockach from Wimpy Lock, working for six and a half years on the construction site, also present here today. His late father himself, he keeps telling me, Hardy, he's been doing so many of these occupational manuals and defects lists for many years, but just the spirit of collaboration and motivation, mobilization. How do you lead a global team since that 1979 moment? It's just fascinating. How do you drive your team? How do you inspire a team? I think there are many beautiful images that we've been looking at that talk so much about your leadership.
I think it's, in the end, show the slides. It's about inspiring a team and shared values and the belief in the quality of design. Everything we design affects the very quality of our lives, whether it's within a building or within an urbanity or within a city. It was quite interesting that the idea of elevating the building and creating this route underneath to embrace the public was very much a social generator. But interestingly, it so impressed the authorities at that time that they extended the right to build, so it added value. It moved the ratio to the site from 1:14 to 1:18, which was unheard of at that time. I remember the bank saying, if the pursuit of excellence means that we have to compromise on the commercial dimension of the building, then we'll accept that. I think everybody was pleasantly surprised that it was the reverse, that actually the social dimension merited an increase in the value of the site. But I'm also reminded, with Penelope here, of Harry Sidler and his contribution to Statue Square with the club building. So there was at that time an extraordinary kind of atmosphere, cultural atmosphere, commercial atmosphere which blended totally. That spirit of idealism, I think, is still wonderfully alive and well here.
That's great. And you also have something about the culture when you were being invited amongst the other companies and firms in the competition. I mean, Penelope always inspires me to say, well, although Harry Sidler and Sidler Associates did not achieve and win this building competition, the consolation prizes Hong Kong Club. But it's all about that achievement, pursuit of excellence, or maybe sometimes you say perfection, imperfection, that skill of being flexible, dynamic, but also you're so rooted in Hong Kong, the culture itself. There's a lot of discussions about you before submission working with the feng shui masters, the geomancers, the local community, taking endless photographs of Hong Kong social life, the little terraces on buildings, the informal qualities to inform the design of HSBC. Could you share about that moment?
I remember coming here and being curious about the local indigenous architecture, the use of shade, and that was a direct influence on the building with shading. I remember at the briefing, I think it was the executive who was responsible for the project, Roy Mundon, and I remember he saying, 'You might hear about something called feng shui, but don't worry, forget it. We'll take care of it.' I remember that of course was a kind of siren call for me to find somebody, a feng shui expert. We commissioned a feng shui expert, and I remember he did a drawing, a sketch, and I forgot about that sketch. When the building was under construction, I was invited to the Centre Pompidou to give a talk on the project. I got out this sketch and the recollection of that meeting with the expert. To my utter surprise, the design, the escalators all followed that early sketch. It was like a discovery, whether it was subliminal or whatever. I remember that getting to Hong Kong at that time was quite a big deal. The aircraft had to stop en route for fuel. So when you came here, like all of the shortlisted competitors, we all came for a briefing. Like everybody else, we'd planned to explore the region, but at the last moment I realized that I didn't really understand how the bank and the banking hall worked. So I approached Roy Mundon and said, 'What if instead of our going off like everybody else, we stay here and explore and find out more about how the banking hall works?' I remember Roy Mundon saying, 'Well, that sounds like a good idea, but of course we'd have to tell everybody else, the other competitors.' So I said, 'Forget it.' So he said, 'Okay, okay.' So we didn't tell anybody else. I remember staying here and really starting to try to understand how that interface between the community and the bank worked. I'm absolutely delighted today to find that the banking hall as a process is still alive and well, because so many banks around the world don't have active banking halls. It's been overtaken by technology, but there is that community element, that relationship between the citizens here and the bank. As I say, I found that very exciting this morning, even if the escalators didn't quite perform. I'm sure they're back in order.
I was just told the entire electricity of the building was paused for the glorious return of Lord Norman Foster.
