The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)
David Adjay is the symbol of a new generation of African architects who defends a committed, human and social art . The career and ideas of this Briton of Ghanaian origin earned him the prestigious gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) last September 30. Adjaye is the first black architect to earn this recognition..
He is not a newcomer. One of the most influential people of the year according to the magazine Time and Sir for three years, Adjaye set up his own studio in 2000 –at only 34 years old– after having worked with the Pritzker Eduardo Souto de Moura . He knows the architectural language of his roots by heart. One of his first works consisted of analyzing the urban layout and the peculiarities of 54 African cities . His travels in Japan -where he visited the work of Yoshio Taniguchi, Toyo Ito and Tadao Ando and where he studied Buddhism at Kyoto University–, make him a rare bird. His canon is not Western. Despite the fact that most of his works are outside the African continent, in all of them you can read his roots: Adjaye was born in Tanzania and lived in Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon before moving to the UK at the age of 9. His buildings have become ambassadors of values and aesthetics.
David Adjay
Perhaps the best known –and without a doubt, the largest and most imposing– is the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington (2016) recognized in 2017 with the Beazley Award . This impressive wrapper that reviews the last 400 years of African-American history and culture is most expressive. Just look at him to guess what he's talking about. Like many of Adjaye's creations, it vindicates the past. The bronze mesh that covers the façade is not just a feat – a new type of bronze alloy and a technique to apply it were invented – it is a nod to the architecture of Louisiana, Charleston and New Orleans . "There were many free slaves who entered the blacksmiths' guilds in the United States. They wasted talent: much of the architecture of the South was built by blacks," admitted David Adjaye in the Smithsonian Mag magazine. In the New Yorker he said that those free slaves adapted traditional techniques from Benin.
The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 – a symbol in the fight against xenophobia and police corruption in the United Kingdom – was the starting point of the homonymous study center designed by David Adjaye and opened in 2007 in South London . Apart from the classrooms, the meeting and computer rooms and the laboratories; their recording studios stand out to edit, mix and record music and video. In Harlem (New York) and since 2005 he has been Sugar Hill , a social housing complex with a preschool center and an Art Museum for children. A fanciful piece –it looks like a mountain taken from a children's story– that talk to the surrounding neo-gothic buildings.
Sugar Hill in Harlem
Adjaye likes to fulfill dreams. own and others. Last year it opened Ruby City in San Antonio, Texas , the art center with free admission for entrepreneurs and patrons Linda Peace . The art collector dreamed it. As it is. He got up one night and scribbled a jeweled crimson palace. Adjaye was in charge of materializing it . The result, a harmonious angular structure that blends with the landscape of San Antonio. Pace never got to see him; he passed away from cancer in 2007.
David Adjaye got the bug of architecture taking his little brother Emmanuel – disabled in a wheelchair – to a special school. He was struck by how maladjusted and inefficient the London establishment was. . He promised himself to eliminate barriers and fight for equality through an architecture committed to society and the environment. Architecture is more than beauty, he told himself, architecture must change lives. That is the engine of creativity of this master.
Ruby City, San Antonio, Texas