The threat of demolition and jail isn't the most auspicious start to an architectural career. Yet soon after establishing his architecture firm in London in 2000, David Adjaye fell foul of the authorities. When his artist-clients ran out of money during construction of their Elektra House, Adjaye economised on the glass facade and built in plywood instead.
Unfortunately the architect forgot he was in a heritage area. The local council objected to the house's windowless and imposing rust-coloured front. Facing its impending wrath, the Ghanaian-British Adjaye turned to architectural elder statesman Richard Rogers for support.
![David Adjaye's Moscow School of Management.](/web/20170211021104im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/7/4/y/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gu6a1u.png/1486447705548.jpg)
Rogers' reference read in part: "David Adjaye is one of the best architects of his generation in Britain, and this house reflects his great ability." Not only did the council call off the hounds, they ended up commissioning a library from him, branded as the Ideas Store.
"Elektra House was a lesson in both humility and determination," Adjaye reflects, on the eve of a series of talks at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and the MPavilion in Melbourne. "It was a stark reality call about the practicalities of architecture. At the same time, it taught me to trust in my craft. Architecture is the art of compromise – you are always working with a team and for a client – but you must have faith in your core vision and never let it be compromised."
![David Adjaye believes that architecture has the ability to liberate.](/web/20170211021104im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/6/9/s/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gu6a1u.png/1486447705548.jpg)
Seventeen years later the tyro is now Sir David Adjaye, just 50 years old but with more than enough completed works behind him to fill multiple monographs. He's a regular collaborator with artists including Scandinavian Olafur Eliasson and Turner prize-winner Chris Ofili, with whom he designed installations at the Venice biennale.
His most recently completed major project, eight years in the making, is the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington DC. Adjaye was lead architect on this ziggurat-like building overlaid with an African-inspired sculptural skin with apertures framing views to significant monuments, including the Lincoln and Martin Luther King memorials.
A softly spoken optimist, Adjaye sees gentrification bringing bad buildings up to scratch and thinks even masterplanning of a Corbusian scale eventually humanises after a couple of generations. (Perhaps cause for hope at Docklands and Fisherman's Bend.)
For an internationally renowned architect, Adjaye's work isn't readily identifiable. A philosophy rather than a style guides his work. "My philosophy has always been to draw out and contribute, or build upon, narratives of place that reside in its cultural, historical and geographical legacy," he says. "Understanding and demonstrating empathy with these narratives is what gives architecture resonance and power, much more so than any authorial style that one can point to."
![David Adjaye's African American History Museum, part of the Smithsonian,in Washington DC.](/web/20170211021104im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/7/4/y/i/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gu6a1u.png/1486447705548.jpg)
"Build it and they will come" has become a hackneyed phrase, but from the beginning Adjaye's buildings have played the Pied Piper. The Dirty House in an industrial area of London heavy with prostitution and drugs inspired gentrification and emulation, while the Skolkovo School of Management – in Moscow's Silicon Valley – was specifically designed for that to occur.
So what's the key to enticing people and development?
![The Whitechapel Idea Store.](/web/20170211021104im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/7/4/y/d/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gu6a1u.png/1486447705548.jpg)
"It's a matter of understanding where you're working and contributing something new that at the same time builds on the precedent of the place," says Adjaye. "The creation of something that re-presents the familiar in an entirely new way … sparks the imagination and inspires."
The Skolkovo, with its cantilevered rectangles over a circular base, suggests a Russian Constructivist painting, a compass or sundial that is designed to orient the new city. The Idea Store library's patterned green-and-white glass facade echoes the striped awnings above the market stalls out front.
![David Adjaye's Dirty House, in London.](/web/20170211021104im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/7/4/x/v/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gu6a1u.png/1486447705548.jpg)
Indeed, community projects – housing and libraries – are at the core of Adjaye's practice.
"What the Idea Store taught us was that traditional modes of building were turning away from those users who needed these services most," he says. "That project was about trying to think through what a truly democratic architecture might look like. What we discovered was that it does not look like a grand palace, but instead looks like the stuff of the everyday; it needed to speak the same language as the high street or the market."
While Adjaye denies being on an architectural crusade, his rhetoric belies it. "I believe firmly that architecture is the physical manifestation of social action, and thus has an immense capacity to edify, to inspire and to uplift. Architecture has the ability, if not the responsibility, to raise up communities and to liberate."
David Adjaye in conversation with Michael Williams, MPavilion, Queen Victoria Gardens, Melbourne, February 13, 7pm, free, and at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, on February 15, 6.30pm, $45/$65.