Building the Future - Kenneth Frampton

In this episode of our ‘Building the Future’ series, we join Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University, New York, and a leading writer on twentieth-century Modernism. He recounts first meeting Norman Foster during the early 1960s and, for Frampton, the designs of Norman Foster’s studio exemplify a “rational objectivity”, comparable to the works of Mies van der Rohe.

[khawarkhurshidahmedmalik]

Yes I agree, but then, what about...
The buildings/projects that Mr Frampton cites as his favourites and 'The Most Favourite', will be on the list of every Foster fan. I'm one too. And these are all works that, I'm sure, would be cited by the next generation of architecture historians also.
My 'most favourite building' by Norman Foster is not on his list, though.
The refurbishing of German Reichstag in Berlin is one example of the sort of work that would be, and should be, cited in the present debate we are having about how to reinterpret classical, or even ancient, architecture in a modernist and to do it such that it satisfies both purists of the modernist movement and those that wish to refer back to the grandiose past.
I guess Mr Frampton, even while fully agreeing with me, would probably point out that Reichstag Berlin by Foster, brilliant fusion of history and futurism as it is, is still a 'refurbishment', rather than a fully original concept, that was conceived for a truly grand historical structure partially damaged by war.
Indeed.
But it still is relevant to our present debate because of its masterly synthesis of two different epochs of architecture in a way that keeps both as distinct but still, acceptably meshed, to satisfy purists on both sides and is loved by the general public too.