David Adjaye was born in Tanzania in 1966. After gaining a B.Arch. from London South Bank University, he graduated with a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Royal College of Art in 1993, where he won the RIBA Bronze Medal.
He is founder and principal architect of Adjaye Associates, with offices in London, New York, and Berlin. Established in June 2000, the practice has received worldwide attention, with work ranging in scale from private houses, cafes and bars, exhibitions and temporary pavilions to major arts centers, civic buildings and masterplans in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
Completed works include the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO (2010); The Nobel Peace Center in Oslo (2005); The Bernie Grant Arts Centre in London (2007); the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver (2007); Rivington Place—a visual arts center in London (2007); and the Idea Stores on Chrisp Street (2004) and Whitechapel (2005)—two pioneering new libraries in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The former was nominated for the Stirling Prize in 2006, received a RIBA Building Award in 2005 and has been exhibited at the VIII Venice Biennale of Architecture (2002 and 2005) and the São Paulo Biennial (2003). The practice is currently engaged on the prestigious commission to design the Smithsonian Institution’s ambitious National Museum of African American Culture and History on a prominent site on the National Mall in Washington D.C.
David Adjaye’s belief in working together with artists and other cultural thinkers has led to a number of notable collaborations on both building projects as well as exhibitions. The practice established its early reputation with a series of private houses where the artist was the client, and this dialogue continues with recent public buildings, exhibitions, and research projects. Adjaye Associates was responsible for the exhibition design of the all-video SITE Santa Fe Eighth International Biennial Exhibition “The Dissolve” (2010); Olafur Eliasson’s light installation Your Black Horizon at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005); and Chris Ofili’s The Upper Room exhibited (1999–2002 and 2010), which is now in the permanent collection of Tate Britain. David Adjaye’s photographic survey of 52 cities across the continent of Africa, “Urban Africa,” exhibited at the Design Museum London (2010), has shifted the understanding of Africa’s metropolitan centers while offering a global resonance and consolidating the African heritage that informs the practice’s work.
Adjaye currently holds a Visiting Professor post at Princeton University School of Architecture. He is a RIBA Chartered Member, an AIA Honorary Fellow, a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was awarded the OBE for services to architecture in 2007 and received the Design Miami/Year of the Artist title in 2011.
Since 2005 he has published numerous books on architecture and has also exhibited widely. Adjaye has co-presented and hosted a number of television series and radio programs for the BBC.
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
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Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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