In this exclusive Dezeen video interview created as part of our high-tech architecture series, British architect Norman Foster reflects on his first high-tech building and how it shaped offices to come.
Named after the electronics manufacturer that commissioned the building, Reliance Controls was an industrial facility located in Swindon in south west England.
Completed in 1967, the building was the last project designed by Team 4, an architecture practice comprising Foster, Richard Rogers, Su Brumwell and Wendy Cheesman.
Team 4 photographed in 1966. Clockwise from top left: Anthony Hunt, Frank Peacock, Maurice Phillips, Norman Foster, Su Brumwell, Richard Rogers, Wendy Cheesman and Sally Appleby
The single-storey rectangular shed, which was designed to house the company's factory and offices, was one of the first buildings labelled as high-tech ? a style of architecture that Foster defines as a celebration of a building's functional components. "High-tech is something to do with the expression of the technology ? the means by which the building stands," he told Dezeen in an exclusive interview at his London practice.
"It's about the diagonals. It's about the cross bracing," he added. "It's about showing what is holding the building up, pushed to a metallic extreme."
The project drew on Team 4's experiences in America, where the four founding members met and studied together at Yale University.
"A number of us studied in America and tra...