Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/48690
In an Industry known for Its paInfully slow pace, adjaye's career has been supersonIc. Moscow's School of Management tional Museum of African American History and Culture. He has just completed the gargantuan task of a photographic survey of every country in Africa, for "Adjaye-Africa-Architecture." A testament to a par- ticular type of self-disciplined wilfulness and belief that has lead him so far so fast. In the boardroom printed copies of new projects are pinned up on the wall. One, which he describes as an incredibly special project, is a monument and museum for extinct species. It spirals out of the earth like a rocky ziggurat. Next to it is a museum in Lisbon, vast private villas by nameless clients, a dense urban quarter in Qatar, housing and holiday projects in Accra and Lagos. On a table of models he picks up a delicate wooden sculpture: his Design Miami/ installation. An evolution from a London installation—a 1:1 scale womb-like cast in wood. Does the lead architect of an international studio really get involved in designing these small things? "I'm the only one that can do them!" he grins. "This is what I do." These small scale 1:1 projects become prototypes, interrogations into the essence of one idea, another idea. He explains there is a direct synergy between this delicate human and the larger scale urban scale projects like a spine of timber chalets twisting along a coastline. The truth is, 10 years after founding Adjaye Associates, and still just 45, Adjaye won the sprint and is shaping himself up for the marathon. While he still maintains a small office in Berlin and is in the process of setting one up in Accra, he maintains absolutely clear about the core work and premise of the work—it's his name over the door. It's a studio, not a commercial office. Adjaye says he has no hesitation turning down work in China. It doesn't seem like the time, given the recession, to be turning down clients, but he is adamant. Adjaye admires the masters who have maintained a sense of control over their output while reach- ing the end of their careers: Siza, Souto De Moura, Steven Holl. "I look up to those guys. Absolutely," he says. "Niemeyer is the model," he says. "If I'm still scribbling when I'm 100 I'll be fulfilled." 78 CULTURED