David Adjaye

Sir David Frank Adjaye (born 22 September 1966) is a Ghanaian-British architect.

Upon graduating with a BA degree in architecture in 1990, he won the RIBA Bronze Medal for the best undergraduate design project in the UK.

In 1993 he graduated from his master's programme at the Royal College of Art.

In 1993, the year of his graduation, Adjaye won the RIBA Bronze Medal Award, a prize offered for RIBA Part 1 projects, normally won by students who have only completed a bachelor's degree.

Previously a unit tutor at the Architectural Association, he was also a lecturer at the Royal College of Art.

Adjaye's early works include many residential projects, including Chris Ofili's house in 1999, Dirty House and Glass House in 2002, and Lorna Simpson's studio-home in 2006.

He then moved on to larger scale projects such as the Idea Store in Whitechapel, UK, and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, in 2005.

This followed their 2005 publication of Adjaye's first book, David Adjaye Houses.

The studio's first solo exhibition, David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings, was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in January 2006, with Thames and Hudson publishing the catalogue of the same name.

Other prominent early works include the Bernie Grant Arts Centre and the Stephen Lawrence Centre in 2007.

Adjaye was selected to design the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, which opened in 2007.

The building, Adjaye's first museum commission, was designed to minimize boundaries between the exterior spaces of the city and the interior galleries of the museum.

Hidden skylights fill the interior spaces with natural light, and large windows look out on the city streets.

The building has five galleries as well as dedicated education spaces, a shop, library and rooftop café.

In 2007, artist Linda Pace reached out to Adjaye to design a contemporary art centre for her art collection shortly before she died from breast cancer that year.

On 15 April 2009, Adjaye was selected lead architect for the team of architects, which includes the Freelon Group, Davis Brody Bond and SmithGroup, to design the new $540 million National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian Institution museum, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. His design features a crown motif from Yoruba sculpture.

Adjaye won a competition to design the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo which was completed in 2010.

Rejecting the traditional campus-style, the building is designed as one form to encourage student interaction.

Adjaye designed two new neighbourhood libraries in Washington, D.C.: the Francis A. Gregory Neighborhood Library and the Bellevue / William O. Lockridge Library, which opened in 2012.

The award-winning libraries are celebrated for being community beacons.

In 2015, the Aishti Foundation, a mixed art gallery and retail space, opened in Beirut, Lebanon.

The gallery space is over 40,000 square feet.

Adjaye's design marries art viewing with shopping, two seemingly conflicting experiences.

The museum opened in the fall of 2016 and was named "the cultural event of the year" by The New York Times.

He is known for having designed many notable buildings around the world, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Adjaye was knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to architecture.

He is the recipient of the 2021 Royal Gold Medal, making him the first African recipient and one of the youngest recipients.

He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 2022.

Adjaye was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The son of a Ghanaian diplomat, he lived in Tanzania, Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon before moving to Britain at the age of nine.

He was knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to architecture, following an OBE in 2007.

Adjaye is the recipient of the 2021 Royal Gold Medal.

Given in recognition of a lifetime's work, the Royal Gold Medal is approved personally by the British monarch and given to a person or group of people who have had a significant influence 'either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture'.

In 2017, Adjaye in conjunction with HuntonBrady Architects revealed the design of the Winter Park Library and Events Center in Winter Park, Florida.

In 2018, 1199SEIU President George Gresham reached out to Adjaye, who later accepted the commission to design the new 16,500-square-foot member space.

The designed featured hundreds of photos gathered from the union's vast photo archive and placed on ceramic tiles produced by Cerámica Suro in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East is located in New York, New York, and was completed in 2020.

It was also the subject of a profile on the Sky Arts programme The Art of Architecture in 2019.

Furniture that Adjaye designed for the museum is manufactured and sold by Knoll.

Ruby City, located in San Antonio, Texas, opened in 2019.

The designed was named Architect's Newspaper Best of Design for Interior Workplace in 2020.