iF Design Lifetime Achievement Award 2025
Lord Norman Foster
The Lifetime Achievement Award aims to honor icons who have changed the tone of what is considered excellence in design: People that have made history and shaped the design world as we know it today! We want to honor these selected icons for their outstanding contributions to the global design community.
This year's iF Design Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Lord Norman Foster!
Lord Norman Foster: "Design is the very essence of the quality of our lives!" - Watch his speech in the video.
Lord Norman Foster receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award 2025. From left to right: Uwe Cremering, Lord Norman Foster, Fritz Frenkler. Watch the video.
The renowned British designer and architect Lord Norman Foster designed more than 80 products, product systems, vehicles, and over 100 iconic buildings such as ‘The Gherkin’ in London, the Millennium Tower in Japan and the glass dome of the Reichstag in Berlin.
His work has had a lasting impact on the world of architecture. As Prof. Fritz Frenkler put it in his laudatory speech: "His works have a soul. A calm precision that makes us feel that someone has really thought about the human-being."
Hear it in Lord Norman Fosters own inspiring words in his personal and emotional speech in the video!
On stage, Lord Norman Foster gave insights into some of his projects, in particular his special relationship with the design of the Berlin Reichstag, where the German parliament comes together. The award ceremony took place only about 10 minutes away from it, so his insights were even more impressive for the audience.
"After reunification, Lord Norman Foster reimagined the Reichstag dome in Berlin. He brought light to a place from which darkness once came. The dome: light for peace, freedom and democracy. His part is done here. Ours begins: to preserve this light", says Fritz Frenkler.
With his studio ‘Foster + Partners’, which operates from 16 locations worldwide, and the Norman Foster
Foundation in Madrid, Foster is also committed to promoting young talent.
For more impressions, click on the photo gallery and go to the section about the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Inaugural iF Design Lifetime Achievement Award 2024 was presented to Dieter Rams
In 2024, the first ever iF Design Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to design icon Dieter Rams. Rams' work has influenced many of the most famous industrial designs. He inspired Apple's former design guru and pioneer of today's smartphone design, the British designer Jonathan Ive. Rams' ten principles for good design still serve as guidelines for designers today, helping them to organise their thoughts on what constitutes good design. Dieter Rams first entered the design world as a carpenter, then began working as an architect, and has been the copyright holder of minimalist product design for decades. Many of the products he designed for Braun have won the iF DESIGN AWARD over the years.