On Tuesday, September 30, David Adjaye, principal of AD100 firm Adjaye Associates, will receive Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Medal for outstanding work in the field of African and African American Studies. Fittingly, the medal, whose past recipients include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the late Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, will be awarded in the university’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, the façade of which Adjaye designed.
The Tanzanian-born, London-educated architect recently made headlines with his winning design for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., which is set to open in 2015. Adjaye’s influence spans the globe, including projects in London, Moscow, and Dakar, among other locales.
Adjaye’s childhood was spent in multiple countries and instilled in the architect a distinct concept of place. Such a nuanced understanding of global culture, perhaps unsurprisingly, has led Adjaye to socially conscious projects. Adjaye Associates recently designed a development in the Sugar Hill neighborhood of Harlem, where medal namesake W. E. B. Du Bois grew up. The 13-story complex integrates affordable housing with a children’s museum and education center, and its development actively involved members of the community.
Beyond the symbolism of this Du Bois connection, Adjaye’s ties to Harvard run deep. He is the architect of the university’s soon-to-open Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, for which he will curate the inaugural exhibition with cocurator Mariane Ibrahim-Lendhart. Entitled "Luminós/C/ity.Ordinary Joy: From the Pigozzi Contemporary African Art Collection,” it will showcase 101 works that highlight the complexities and monotonies of urban life as a background for human existence and interaction.
Currently the John C. Portman Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard, Adjaye has also held professorships at Princeton University, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and London’s Royal College of Art, where he studied.
