Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1966 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Year of Migration to the UK: 1975

Other name/s: David Frank Adjaye, Sir David Frank Adjaye OBE RA

Biography

Architect David Adjaye was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1966. His father, Affram, was a diplomat whose career required the family to move around Africa and the Middle East before eventually settling in London in 1975. Early impressions of the rich and varied architecture throughout Africa later inspired Adjaye to document and explore the urban landscape in his long-running project Adjaye Africa Architecture: A Photographic Survey of Metropolitan Architecture (2011). In 1990, Adjaye graduated with Honours in Architecture from London South Bank University; his final designs won the RIBA Bronze Medal and he was also nominated for the RIBA President's Medal. Before enrolling at the Royal College of Art, London, he took a 'gap' year working as an apprentice and spent time in Portugal studying with Eduardo Souto de Moura. During this period he also visited Japan which became an important influence in his later works.

In 1993, he received his MA from the Royal College of Art and quickly established his practice with William Russell, setting up Adjaye & Russell in north London a year later. They initially specialised in private housing and unconventional artists' studios for renowned artists, included designing Jake Chapman's London home and Chris Ofili's studio home in Habio Falls, Trinidad (both 1999). Adjaye subsequently collaborated with Ofili on many occasions, designing the installation of The Upper Room, originally displayed at the Victoria Miro Gallery, London in 1999, then restaged at Tate Britain (2002); Ofili's designs also proved a source of inspiration for Adjaye's later architectural projects, such as the Stephen Lawrence Centre's façade. Adjaye established his own eponymous studio Adjaye Associates in 2000, which specialised in public buildings (while not completely abandoning private projects, such as creating a residence for actor Ewan McGregor in 2000), along with eccentric homes, such as the Dirty House (2002) and the Mole House (2019) in London. In 2004 he received his first grand-scale public commission for the Idea Store community libraries, built on the remains of a 1960s shopping centre in Whitechapel, east London (2004, 2005) which were shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2006. In 2005, Thames and Hudson published Adjaye's first book, Houses: Recycling, Reconfiguring, Rebuilding and he held his first solo exhibition in January 2006 at the Whitechapel Gallery, entitled David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings. The following year he was awarded an OBE for services to British architecture. Adjaye has also won RIBA International Awards for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2008) and the Francis Gregory Library and William O Lockridge/Bellevue Library in Washington DC (both USA, 2013). He has also received the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's McDermott award (2016), a $100,000 prize for excellence in the arts, and the Washington University International Humanities Medal (2018). His largest project to date, The National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, DC, opened in 2016. He is also known for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, USA; the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Norway, and the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management in Russia. His well-regarded London-based projects include the Rivington Place arts centre in Hackney, east London; the Stephen Lawrence Centre (both 2007) built as both a community centre and a memorial to the black architecture student killed in 1993; and the Sclera Pavilion for the London Design Festival (2008), while in April 2021 his a memorial pavilion to local resident, Cherry Groce, killed by the Metropolitan police, was unveiled in Brixton, south London. In May 2019, his Ghana Freedom Pavilion was inaugurated at the 58th Venice Art Biennale. Adjaye has co-authored two seasons of 'Dreamspaces', a television series for the BBC and he also hosts a BBC radio programme. He has taught at the Architectural Association and at the Royal College of Art.

Adjaye has studios in Accra, London and New York, with commissions across the world. His current projects include the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, London, led by Adjaye Associates, with Ron Arad Architects as Memorial Architect, and Gustafson Porter + Bowman as Landscape Architect; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, in collaboration with Cooper Robertson; The Abrahamic Family House, an interfaith complex in Abu Dhabi; Royal Benin Museum in Benin City, Nigeria; the National Cathedral of Ghana in Accra; and the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Related books

Adjaye: Works, Volume 1 (London/New York: Thames and Hudson, 2020)
David Adjaye, Form, Heft, Material (Yale University Press, 2015)
David Adjaye, Adjaye Africa Architecture: A Photographic Survey of Metropolitan Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 2011)
David Adjaye, Houses: Recycling, Reconfiguring, Rebuilding (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005)

Public collections

Related organisations

Adjaye Associates (owner)
Architectural Association (tutor)
London South Bank University (student)
Royal College of Art (student, lecturer)

Selected exhibitions

David Adjaye: Making Memory, Design Museum, London (2019)
David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2006)
The Upper Room: installation by Chris Ofili and David Adjaye, Tate Britain (2002)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [David Adjaye]