Foster was named the best of three contenders for the West Kowloon Cultural District, rivaling Rem Koolhaas and leading Hong Kong architect Rocco Im. For Foster, this is more than the right to tackle a £ 1.7bn, 40-hectare project - it's also a kind of revenge. He had already worked on this project in the early 2000s, but was then "fired" by local authorities worried about rising costs. The current, second edition of West Kowloon is more modest in ambition, but still includes many cultural institutions, housing, offices and a spacious park; all three bids Hong Kong showed in Venice at the last architecture biennale.
Also, Foster, together with Neil Tomlinson Architects, presented a project for the reconstruction of the largest wholesale market for food and flowers in Great Britain - New Covent Garden. It is located on the south bank of the Thames, in an area where there is an active regeneration. Nearby are the former Battersea Power Plant, which was being renovated by Raphael Vignoli, and the site of the new US Embassy complex.
Foster's bureau will take care of the northern part of the 23 hectare zone: now there is a flower market, and in the future there will be three residential towers from 47 to 23 floors and a park. Neil Tomlinson Architects will redevelop the main market complex, erect a new retail food market and housing on the edge of the site (there will be a total of 2,500 apartments).
At the same time, it was announced that in the near future, the construction of four stations according to the project of Norman Foster - in Jeddah, Mecca, Medina and the "Economic City of King Abdullah" - on the new line of the Haramain high-speed railway in Saudi Arabia will begin. The line is primarily intended for the transportation of pilgrims during the Hajj.
The stations, including the publicly displayed Jeddah station, will be modular systems that can be expanded as needed. In Jeddah, 25-meter "arches" support the ceiling of the main hall, 9-meter - the level of the platforms.
