MADRID (AFP).- British architecture superstar Norman Foster on Thursday inaugurated the headquarters of his foundation in Madrid to conduct research into sustainable cities and infrastructure.

The Norman Foster Foundation will be led by Spanish architect Maria Nicanor, previously a curator at London's Victoria and Albert Museum and associate curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

The foundation was born in 1999 but was run out of Foster's architectural practice in London and never had its own headquarters.

Now, it will be run out of a sun-lit house in central Madrid as an independent institution that will create practical and experimental projects and promote research in collaboration with universities, local governments and industry partners.

"The one advantage of a foundation over a practice is that it is totally free to address the kind of issues that traditional practices are either not interested in or can't afford to be interested in," Foster, who turned 82 on Thursday, said in a video on the foundation website.

He described it as "a venue to bring people from different backgrounds together to really tackle some of the big issues of humanity."

An example of one of the foundation's projects is a droneport, a prototype of which is on permanent show in Venice after it was unveiled there during the architecture biennale last year.

The project is based on the idea of creating a network of droneports to deliver medical supplies and other necessities to areas of Africa and other continents that are difficult to access due to a lack of transport infrastructure.


© Agence France-Presse