Mapping Design Networks: Archaeology of Team 4 and Foster Associates’ early years through Agency, Archives and Media (1961-1979)
PhD Research at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Cross-Disciplinary Doctoral Program of Architecture and Urbanism (03F1)
2020-2026
The dissertation combines ten years of research at the Norman Foster Foundation Archive with oral histories to reconstruct Team 4 Architects and Foster Associates as networked design systems. Treating the archive as a field site, it reads drawings, correspondence and photographs as sequential evidence of practice. Focusing on 1961–79—from Foster and the Rogerses’ US apprenticeships, through Team 4 in Britain, to Foster Associates’ consolidation—it shifts attention from buildings to infrastructures of collaboration, media, representation and workplace organisation. The argument develops through three enquiries: cross-Atlantic contacts shaping teamwork and consultancy; a “graphic assembly line” and publication strategy in which representation coordinated expertise; and a genealogy of workspaces, from domestic to Fitzroy Street settings that scripted interaction and information flow. Drawing on ethnography, histoires croisées, media studies and Actor–Network Theory, it foregrounds overlooked mediators and reads the La Gomera masterplan (1974–75) as a model of portable yet situated practice anticipating global architecture.
With the support of: Fulbright Commission Spain, Docomomo US-NY, Yale School of Architecture, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid-Delegación Norteamérica, Real Colegio Complutense en Harvard, Fundación Rafael del Pino, Fundación Iberoamericana de Yuste
