A fearless and nonconformist thinker at the height of his abilities, London-based, Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye OBE is reinventing the possibilities of his profession. One of the leading architects of his generation and a global cultural ambassador for the UK, his clever use of materials and sculptural capabilities have established him as an architect with an artist’s sensibility and vision. Intense travelling as a child and into his adulthood allowed him to develop an enhanced degree of cultural sensitivity and led him to discover a mixture of architectural styles from buildings like the Karnak temple complex in Egypt, the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali and traditional tea houses in Kyoto, Japan, which have in turn influenced his practice. The fact that his youngest brother was wheelchair-bound also had an impact on him, as it caused him to consider the “social responsibility” of architecture. Creating buildings that serve society’s greatest needs is often reflected in his work. Born in 1966 in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents, he was raised in several countries in Africa and the Middle East, before eventually settling with his family in London at the age of 13, thanks to the job of his diplomat father. After earning a master’s degree in architecture from the Royal College of Art in 1993, he set up Adjaye and Russell with William Russell the following year instead of joining a large architectural firm, before founding Adjaye Associates in 2000.
Starting with shops, restaurants and private residences like Elektra House and Dirty House in London (2000/2002) – both with dark, austere exteriors that were perfect for their artist owners – Adjaye’s true calling lay in doing public projects, such as the Idea Stores (2004/2005), a library/community center in two London neighborhoods whose light, airy spaces were vibrant and attractive, the Nobel Peace Centre in the shell of a disused railway station in Oslo (2005), the Stephen Lawrence Centre with teaching and community spaces dedicated to improving opportunities for young black people in south London (2007) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver (2007) – unusual in the field of architecture to be able to work on such prominent buildings at a relatively young age. However, his most prestigious commission to date is the $540 million, 29,000-sqm Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (2016) that reveals the trajectory of the African-American experience through its radically-inventive esthetic inspired by Yoruban tribal art and architecture, to which he brought everything he knew into its design. Having won the competition for the museum in 2009, he created column-free interiors that maximize natural light and a three-tiered bronzed aluminum façade whose intricate filigree patterns reference the ironwork of former slaves in Charleston and New Orleans.
Today, Adjaye Associates has offices in London, New York and soon Accra, with international projects like the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo (2010), the Washington furniture collection for Knoll (2013-2015), the Alara concept store in Lagos (2014), the Art Deco-influenced Double Zero seating range for Moroso (2015), the Aishti Foundation shopping and cultural complex in Beirut (2015) and the Sugar Hill mixed-use social housing, museum and child education scheme in New York (2015). Current London projects include One Berkeley, a £600 million scheme in the Piccadilly area, and the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre. In the US, he’s working on the new home for The Studio Museum in Harlem, a gallery for the Linda Pace Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, and the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard master plan in San Francisco.
When not designing, Adjaye visited and photographed every African capital over the course of more than a decade from 1999 to 2010, and subsequently published the images as a seven-volume set, African Metropolitan Architecture. Garnering numerous awards for his work, he was named the Design Miami/ Designer of the Year in 2011 and one of 2017’s most influential people by TIME magazine. Last year, he received a knighthood from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for services to architecture, for which he said, “I see this not as a personal celebration, but as a celebration of the vast potential – and responsibility – for architecture to effect positive social change, that we as architects have to bring something positive to the world.”
Check back next week for Part 2 featuring a Q&A with Sir David Adjaye.