David Adjaye, RIBA
Visiting Professor, Architectural Design
B. Arch., Southbank University
M.A. Arch., Royal College of Art
Adjaye/Associates, London
www.adjaye.com
David Adjaye is now recognized as one of the leading architects of his generation, both in the UK and worldwide. He formed a partnership in 1994 and quickly developed a reputation as an architect with an artist's sensibility and vision. His ingenious use of materials, bespoke design, and ability to sculpt and showcase light have engendered high regard from both the architectural community and the wider public. He reformed his studio in June 2000 as Adjaye Associates and has since gone on to win a number of prestigious commissions. Projects have been diverse in scale, audience and geography; collaborations with artists including Chris Ofili and Olafur Eliasson, exhibition design, temporary pavilions and private homes both in the UK and New York. More recently, major arts centres and important public buildings across London, Oslo and Denver have demonstrated his considered approach to understanding the needs of the constituency served by each building and a respect for integration with their existing locale. Mr. Adjaye understands his status as a role model for young people and lectures frequently. He was the first Louis Kahn visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and was the Kenzo Tange Professor in Architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Previously a unit tutor at the Architectural Association; he was also a lecturer at the Royal College of Art where he received his MA in architecture in 1993. That same year he was awarded the RIBA First Prize Bronze Medal. Following this, he trained at David Chipperfield Architects and then Eduardo Souto de Moura Architects in Oporto. Mr. Adjaye is a visiting lecturer at the Barcelona Institute of Architecture, and continues to lecture for numerous universities and institutions worldwide. In May 2005, Thames & Hudson published his first book, David Adjaye Houses: Recyling, Reconfiguring, Rebuilding which was distributed worldwide. In January 2006, the Whitechapel Gallery in London hosted the studio's first exhibition 'David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings', which was accompanied by a book of the same name. In June 2005 he presented the TV programme "Building Africa: Architecture of a Continent". This was brought full circle in 2010, when Mr. Adjaye completed work for his exhibition entitled "Urban Africa", a photographic journey documenting urban life in cities across the continent of Africa. The exhibition launched at the Design Museum in London and will continue its tour at Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland and Africa.Cont in Lisbon. Since 2006, he has expanded his practice to include offices in Berlin and New York City and now holds numerous prestigious commissions worldwide, including the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, his first business school which was completed in 2010, and the design for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, which was awarded in 2009 and is slated for completion in 2015.
