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Now in its tenth year, the prize celebrates ‘the achievements of designers who are making or who have made a significant difference to our lives through innovation, originality and imagination’, with past winners including Zaha Hadid, Marc Newson and Dieter Rams. — wallpaper.com
David Adjaye received the Panerai London Design Medal for "consistent design excellence", while Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde (Studio Roosegaarde) took home the Airbnb Design Innovation Medal, for his work designing building (and jewelry)-sized smog filters.Other winners of this year's prizes... View full entry
Standing assertively in the middle of a 15-acre lawn, between the sharp white obelisk of the Washington Monument and the colossal stone shed of the National Museum of American History, the latest arrival to this hallowed parade ground certainly holds its own. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture erupts from the ground, an inverted pagoda of three angular bronzed tiers on an all-glass base, departing from its neighbours’ sombre palette...with joyous glee. — the Guardian
Like the exhibitions inside it, the museum building embodies its complexities and contradictions, charged as it is with a brief and a site as impossibly fraught as the history it is telling. Despite some clunks, the result has a compelling, spiky otherness, standing on the Mall as a welcome rebuke... View full entry
“It’s about architecture, but also about memory and history,” Adjaye says when we meet at the site on a cloudy afternoon in mid-May. “I got exactly what I wanted on the exterior, which was a dark, brooding, bronzelike building.” Before going inside, he points out what he calls the “oculus,” a circular raised platform at the west entrance through whose glass windows you can see the room below. “We found out that this spot was once a slave market, right on the Mall,” he says. — Vogue
“The oculus is like a slave pedestal, levitated off the ground. I’ve tried to make every decision here have some history.”For more on the British-Ghanaian architect, check out past Archinect coverage:David Adjaye is releasing a vinyl record with his brother"Quintessential... View full entry
‘David says I’m the ears and he’s the eyes,’ Peter says of their working relationship. ‘When I see architecture I hear sounds – I respond to the visual. David responds to sound – he creates with a soundtrack in his mind.’
The collaboration first started in 2003 with the Asymmetric Chamber – an architectural installation that Manchester’s CUBE gallery commissioned David to design. As part of the work, Peter composed a soundscape titled ‘Echoes’ to play in the space.
— thespaces.com
David's brother Peter Adjaye, aka AJ Kwame, is a composer, musician and DJ based in London. Their vinyl collaboration, Dialogues, will be released on July 8.Listen to one of Peter's pieces for architecture below:For more on David Adjaye, the "very artistic architect":David Adjaye is the best bet... View full entry
[Project leader Zena] Howard focuses on all of the aspects of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, but hones in on the porch, which happens to span 200 feet and it serves as an transitional space between the outside and inside of the museum.
“I think that the porch is…quintessential America,” [...]
“This project—not only given the scale, the complexity, the political and contextual sensitivities—is an amalgam of all the problems that we, as architects, love to solve”
— blackyouthproject.com
Related on Archinect:What architecture means to Zena Howard, project leader of the National Museum of African American History and CultureDavid Adjaye talks about woven architecture and his new D.C. museumObama to speak at African American history museum’s groundbreakingWatch: First Look at the... View full entry
Syracuse University is one step closer to selecting a world-class partner to conceptualize, design, and construct the new National Veterans Resource Complex (NVRC). The NVRC Selection Committee, made up of faculty, staff, students, and design professionals, recently reviewed the qualifications of 28 of the world’s foremost architecture firms. [...] has selected three finalists to advance to the final round of the competition. The finalists are: Adjaye Associates; SHoP; and Snohetta. — nvrc.syr.edu
"Notably, each of these firms is among the seven finalists currently vying for the opportunity to design the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago," the school's announcement goes on to say.More Syracuse Architecture news on Archinect:Deans List: Michael Speaks of Syracuse ArchitectureTwo Syracuse... View full entry
The pervading sentiment in the architectural community is that Adjaye, a Ghanaian British architect, is the odds-on favorite...
What no one has suggested publicly (though its oft-mentioned in social settings) is that Adjaye will be chosen because he is black. The rationalization is President Obama will “naturally" tap him for the job...
Adjaye, who was born in Tanzania to Ghanian parents, and holds British citizenship, has a very different experience than his African American peers...
— ArtNet
"The black British experience is a far cry from the African American experience, and it's undermining and lazy to presuppose that the first black President will favor an architect simply because of the color of his skin."Related:Archinect's front runners for the 2016 Pritzker PrizeThese are the... View full entry
Next Wednesday, January 13, the 2016 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize will be announced. The winner will receive the Pritzker's bronze medal, $100,000, and an avalanche of "what does this mean for architecture" media attention. Check back here for the winner announcement first thing... View full entry
Mr. Adjaye’s public architecture often poses questions about the value systems historically associated with building types. [...]
His explorations into African textile patterns, tribal mythologies, the legacy of slavery and postcolonial modernism are far from predictable sources for architecture. [...]
...the collection of images provides a fascinating look at the transmogrification of European ideas into African shapes.
— wsj.com
A raft of museums, most backed by private money, are springing up in what is, for many, an unlikely cultural hub: Beirut, the capital of Lebanon [...]
The design competition launched on 1 October; the architect Zaha Hadid is on the jury along with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones of London's Serpentine Galleries.
Salamé, who founded the Aïshti fashion chain, invested $100m in funding a contemporary art museum, designed by the British architect David Adjaye, in Jal El Dib [...].
— theartnewspaper.com
With a few high-profile projects and a retrospective in Chicago already in tow, David Adjaye was announced by the Council for the Arts at MIT as the 2016 recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts. First established by the Council in 1974 as a way to honor rising creative talent, the... View full entry
From Kiev to Los Angeles, from mind-bending artist Dan Graham to stately architect Kevin Roche, the Graham Foundation has announced the 49 international winners of its 2015 Grants to Organizations. Each year, the Foundation gives out two sets of grants: one for individuals including architects... View full entry
Since opening in 1968, the Studio Museum in Harlem has had to make do with difficult homes. Originally operating out of a rented loft, the museum moved into a roomier early 20th century commercial space, renovated by J. Max Bond, Jr., in 1982. But despite further renovations, the building's age... View full entry
Adjaye is overseeing the newest installment of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s “Selects” series, which spotlights the little-known West African textiles in the museum’s permanent collection. [...] It also offers the celebrated architect a chance to explore the surprising connections between textile making and building design.
“What’s interesting to me is this idea of fabric and weaving as a kind of abstraction of making places that people come together in,” he says.
— Smithsonian.com
Related: First Look at the Museum of African American History and Culture View full entry
The undoing of the master narratives of modernism should not be taken as an opportunity for an architecture of spectacle and fantasy, but instead one that, utilizing the lessons of the past, speaks to the complexities of the present and the forces that shape us. It is crucial to deconstruct the idea that design can be universal and instead, to think in terms of an architecture that derives inspiration from the specificity of geography, culture and place. — huffingtonpost.com