✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
United Kingdom, Spain, Germany · 2010
1h 18m
Director Norberto López Amado, Carlos Carcas
Starring Norman Foster, Deyan Sudjic
Genre Documentary
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
Directors Norberto López Amado and Carlos Carcas trace the rise of one of the world's premier architects, Norman Foster, and his unending quest to improve the quality of life through design. Features interviews from friends, colleagues, and Foster himself, alongside aerial shots of his most famous structures.
By the time this fawning documentary gets to Foster's CG-animated rendering for a $15 billion planned city in Abu Dhabi (a movie within the movie), you realize it's essentially an infomercial for the company he unsuccessfully tried to sell before the 2008 crash.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Mr. Goldberger's words are among the more substantive in a film that at times seems ready to levitate from the screen on puffy clouds of praise.
Lionizing a world-class architect without tipping into hagiography, this documentary performs a graceful cinematic dance around his works.
Veers too close to hagiography, although it's visually arresting enough to carry you through sagging in the narrative.
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
The film is an architecture lover's dream.
A better movie would have explored Foster's way-of-the-future objectives with more beyond-the-hype insight and less Zen-master bullshit.
A treatment of Foster so reverential it verges on camp.
There's plenty of material for a lively, profound documentary about Norman Foster. But How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? is, by design, lightweight.
When an old case ends up on Carls Mørck’s desk 20 years later, he realises that something is terribly wrong.