A Monumental Man
A little more than a decade ago, David Adjaye hovered on the verge of bankruptcy, his budding architectural practice devastated by the Great Recession. “Budgets were slashed,” he recalls. “I was employing about 30 people at that time and had about six decent projects, which was a lot for a young architect. But I was winging it. I wasn’t a businessperson. I lost all my savings, going through the insolvency system and paying off everyone personally.”
It was a rough comedown for an architect whose early works had gained notice for their rigorous and subversive designs. But only a year later, in 2009, Adjaye won the heated competition to design the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., marking a stunning reversal of his fortunes. “Just when people thought that I was done with,” he marvels, “the Smithsonian revived me and introduced me to America. It felt supernatural.” He describes the experience as a form of baptism.
As well as being a personal redemption, the museum, which opened in 2016, won the Ghanaian-British designer several awards and catapulted him into the starchitect stratosphere. The following year, thanks to a knighthood, he added “Sir” to his name. Adjaye stands among the most acclaimed architects working today and has become a go-to man for monuments and museums, including a planned Holocaust memorial by the Houses of Parliament in London. He has also become something of a spokesman for Black architects, a role he inhabits eloquently, though reluctantly.
Sir David, 54, is now the very model of a modern celebrity architect, with homes and offices in London, New York and Ghana. He has designed houses for other creative luminaries—always a badge of honor—including Ewan McGregor, artists Chris Ofili and Jake Chapman, photographer Juergen Teller and Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation, as well as for the late United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan. Adjaye’s 130 William luxury condo tower is under construction in Lower Manhattan, and he is working with Four Seasons on its new private residences in Washington, D.C. The latest book to feature his will be published by Thames & Hudson this month.
