Norman Foster, the Yale year that shaped a British empire of design

Before the practice and the peerage there was a scholarship: a Henry Fellowship that took a Manchester graduate to Yale, where Norman Foster — a fellow of Jonathan Edwards College — earned his Master's in Architecture. He went home, founded what became Foster + Partners in 1967, and in 1999 became the 21st Pritzker Prize laureate. America stayed on the drawing board: among the projects his studio lists is the Porcelanosa showroom in New York.

For Tecno he designed the Nomos table system — an exposed structural frame, engineering you can sit at — later joined by Cosmos. Through La Mercanti, both cross the Atlantic the way he once did: on merit.