Adjaye: Works 2007-2015
Edited by Peter Allison
Thames & Hudson, October 2022
Hardcover | 10-1/2 x 10-1/2 inches | 300 pages | 500 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780500343807 | $90
PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
Following Adjaye: Works 1995-2007, this second volume looks back on the impressive portfolio of work created by architect David Adjaye between 2007 and 2015. During the years covered in this book, the acclaimed architect embraced expansive projects, taking him outside Europe to work on major ventures, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver and the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo. Designing buildings around the world, including two projects connected with the post-Katrina reconstruction program in New Orleans, Adjaye carefully tailored his approach to each place, sensitive to the important role architecture plays in affirming a sense of community and identity.
Adjaye: Works 2007-2015 brings together these recent projects and presents them with new analyses and personal insights from the architect, including detailed drawing and site plans and stunning color photography, demonstrating the originality of Adjaye’s talents.
Peter Allison is a London-based exhibition curator and teacher. He is the author of many books, including the companion book to this title, David Adjaye: Works - Houses, Pavilions, Installations, Buildings, 1995-2007.
REFERRAL LINKS:
REVIEW:
In my review of David Adjaye: Works 1995-2007 (Thames & Hudson, 2000) I wondered if the book "was planned as the first of a series of complete works, in the vein of Renzo Piano Building Workshop's now-five-volume series done with Peter Buchanan," further asserting that "[David] Adjaye is certainly a candidate for such a treatment." Two years later, when I received Works 2007–2015 from the publisher, I learned that a series is well underway, with a third volume most likely arriving in two more years. Elsewhere in my review I described the first volume as "an origin story" covering early commissions that Adjaye describes in that book as "the formation of the thinking that underpins my current work." If the first volume presents, in another metaphor, the adolescence of Adjaye Associates, the second volume conveys the firm's maturation across 35 built works.
While the offerings in the first volume, with its glut of residential projects in London, yields just one Adjaye building I've seen in person (Pitch Black, 2006), the new monograph has four. It begins with the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, which was completed in 2007 and which I saw when the AIA Convention was in Denver in 2013; it ends with Sugar Hill, the mixed-use, affordable housing development that was completed in 2015 and is a simple subway ride for this New Yorker. The other two are Proenza Schouler, a ten-year-old clothing store on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and the also decade-old Francis A. Gregory Neighborhood Library in Washington, DC. This book is about Adjaye, not me, but one of the best ways to gauge the success of a monograph is to see what it offers someone who is familiar with the buildings firsthand. So, in this sense, is Works 2007–2015 successful? Yes — and no.
The "yes" applies to buildings, such as MCA Denver, that are presented across double-digit pages. The text descriptions for all of the projects are short — one paragraph, or two-or-three sentences — but the buildings given longer treatment have a second chunk of text, as well as more photographs and drawings. MCA Denver is one of these, not only because it is a remarkable building that is full of surprises, but because Adjaye describes it in his brief foreword as "a competition win that dramatically changed my focus." Ideas on geography and the changing light in different places came to fore in this museum located in one of the sunniest places in the United States. Given its importance in the firm's output, it makes for a fitting beginning to the second volume. The text by Peter Allison and the numerous photographs are helpful in understanding the building, though I also appreciate the two-page spread with plans, sections, and elevations. More understanding follows with a presentation of the neighboring LN House; at six pages, it is considerably briefer than MCA Denver's 16 pages, but it also has a spread of drawings. Both projects are more well documented in print here than on the architect's website, another indication that a monograph is successful.
The "no" to my question above pertains to projects like Proenza Schouler, which happens to be the only one of the four projects I've seen in person that is presented across single-digit pages. This is no surprise, given the important of MCA Denver, Sugar Hill, and the two DC libraries designed by Adjaye, as well as the fact it is an interior, not a ground-up building. But four pages with five sentences, six photographs, and one drawing (a longitudinal section) does not make for in-depth coverage; if anything, it fulfills the notion that the Works monographs are repositories of all of the built works — houses, pavilions, installations, buildings — carried out by Adjaye Associates. In this sense, though, that "no" is less definitive, less severe.
What about the buildings and other works that this writer hasn't seen in person? Surely the success of a monograph can be determined, in part, by how well it describes a building so that it transports the reader there, or actually prompts them to search it out and see it in person. One of my favorite projects in this regard is Piety Street Bridge and Piety Wharf in New Orleans, started three years after Hurricane Katrina, in 2008, and completed in 2014. Cor-ten steel, used previously in the LN House, is the main material, befitting the industrial setting and giving the project a presence. But I am drawn to the way the design knits the new waterfront park to the neighborhood separated from it by active railroad tracks. Another highlight is Seven (as it's called in the book), the renovation and addition to a 19th-century carriage house in a landmark district on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The spatial inventiveness of MCA Denver is extended to this private residence that also functions as a gallery.
In sum, the documentation of the projects across Works 2007–2015 makes me excited for the next volume, which will include what is arguably David Adjaye's most important work to date, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. (The building already has its own book, Begin with the Past by historian Mabel O. Wilson, but it wouldn't surprise me if another one follows that focuses on the input of Adjaye and rest of the collaborative design team.) Other important post-2015 projects include Ruby City in Texas, Mole House in London, Winter Park Library & Events Center in Florida, and the residential skyscraper nearing completion at 130 William Street in Lower Manhattan. To continue the metaphor used above, the anticipated Volume 3 could be described as "the further maturation of David Adjaye," something I'm looking forward to seeing in print.
FOR FURTHER READING:
- African Metropolitan Architecture by David Adjaye, edited by Peter Allison (Rizzoli, 2011); also available in a compact edition
- David Adjaye: A House for an Art Collector (Rizzoli, 2011)
- David Adjaye: Form, Heft, Material (Art Institute of Chicago, 2015)
- David Adjaye: Living Spaces by David Adjaye, edited by Peter Allison (Thames & Hudson, 2017)
- David Adjaye - Works 1995-2007: Houses, Pavilions, Installations, Buildings by Adjaye Associates, edited by Peter Allison (Thames & Hudson, 2020)