2018 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals to be awarded to David Adjaye

The University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello have unveiled this year's winners of their highest honors, the 2018 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals in architecture, law and citizen leadership.

Sir David Adjaye OBE, the architect behind the National Museum of African American History and Culture, is the 2018 recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. Adjaye is recognized as a leading architect of his generation. Born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents, his influences range from contemporary art, music and science to African art forms and the civic life of cities.

The awards are presented jointly on April 13 – Jefferson's birthday – by U.Va., which he founded in Charlottesville in 1819, and by the Foundation, the independent, nonprofit organization that owns and operates his home, Monticello.

This year's recipients.-

Architecture.- Sir David Adjaye OBE, a globally acclaimed architect and founder of Adjaye Associates renowned for his ingenious use of materials and sculptural designs, including the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Citizen Leadership: Morgan Carrington “Cary” Fowler Jr., an American agriculturalist and former executive director of the Crop Trust whose decades of work championing crop diversity and conservation included the creation of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault – the world’s largest collection of crop diversity, housing more than 930,000 distinct varieties; more
Law: Frank H. Easterbrook, a judge on the USA Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and senior lecturer of law at the University of Chicago Law School, known for his expertise in antitrust law, criminal law and procedure, and corporate law. more

Adjaye will give a public talk on April 13 at 4:00 p.m. in the Old Cabell Hall Auditorium.

Previous winners of the Architecture medal include Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Rafael Moneo, Toyo Ito, Cecil Balmond, and Yvonne Farrell + Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects.

In 1994, he set up his first office, where his ingenious use of materials and his sculptural ability established him as an architect with an artist’s sensibility and vision. He reformed his studio as Adjaye Associates in 2000. The firm now has offices in London, New York and Accra, Ghana, with projects in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

His largest project to date, the $540 million Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in fall of 2016; its debut was named Cultural Event of the Year by the New York Times.

“Named among TIME’s 100 most influential people in the world and knighted by the Queen for his contributions to architecture, Sir David Adjaye is one of the most prominent and truly creative designers of his generation,” School of Architecture Dean Ila Berman said. “As the lead architect for the award-winning Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture located on the Mall in Washington D.C., he has enabled architecture, through its strong symbolic and physical presence, to embody and give a voice to histories that have remained buried for many years since the founding of this nation. Monolithic and monumental, yet as ephemeral as a materialized shadow, this work is an astounding and sublime jewel – a long-awaited treasure for the nation as a whole.”

Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals. Photograph by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications.

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. Adjaye Associates, The Freelon Group, Davis Brody Bond, SmithGroupJJR for the Smithsonian Institution. Image courtesy of Design Museum

Rendering. UK Holocaust memorial by Adjaye Associates and Ron Arad Architects

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DAVID ADJAYE

David Adjaye was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1966. The son of a Ghanaian diplomat who has lived in Tanzania, Egypt, Yemen, and Lebanon before moving to Britain at the age of nine, he led a privileged life and was privately educated. He earned his BA at London South Bank University, before graduating with an MA in 1993 from the Royal College of Art. In 1993, the same year of graduation, Adjaye won the RIBA Bronze Medal, a prize offered for RIBA Part 1 projects, normally won by students who have only completed a bachelor's degree.

Previously a unit tutor at the Architectural Association, he was also a lecturer at the Royal College of Art. After very short terms of work with the architectural studios of David Chipperfield (London) and Eduardo Souto de Moura (Porto), Adjaye established a practice with William Russell in 1994 called Adjaye & Russell, based in North London. This office was disbanded in 2000 and Adjaye established his own eponymous studio at this point.

Recent works include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, and the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management completed in 2010. On April 15, 2009, he was selected in a competition to design the $500 million National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., planned to open in 2015. His design features a crown motif from Yoruba sculpture.

Alongside his international commissions, Adjayes work spans exhibitions, private homes, and artist collaborations. He built homes for the designer Alexander McQueen, artist Jake Chapman, photographer Juergen Teller, actor Ewan McGregor, and artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster. For artist Chris Ofili, he designed a new studio and a beach house in Port of Spain. He worked with Ofili to create an environment for the Upper Room, which was later acquired by Tate Britain and caused a nationwide media debate. He also collaborated with artist Olafur Eliasson to create a light installation, Your black horizon, at the 2005 Venice Biennale. He has also worked on the art project Sankalpa with director Shekhar Kapur. Adjaye coauthored two seasons of BBC's Dreamspaces television series and hosts a BBC radio program. In June 2005, he presented the documentary, Building Africa: Architecture of a Continent. In 2008, he participated in Manifesta 7.

In February 2009, the cancellation or postponement of four projects in Europe and Asia forced the firm to enter into a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA), a deal to stave off insolvency proceedings which prevents financial collapse by rescheduling debts – estimated at about £1m – to creditors.

Adjaye currently holds a Visiting Professor post at Princeton University School of Architecture. He was the first Louis Kahn visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and was the Kenzo Tange Professor in Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design. In addition, he is a RIBA Chartered Member, an AIA Honorary Fellow, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council. He also serves as member of the Advisory Boards of the Barcelona Institute of Architecture and the London School of Economics Cities programme.

The studio's first solo exhibition: "David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings" was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in January 2006, with Thames and Hudson publishing the catalogue of the same name. This followed their 2005 publication of Adjaye's first book entitled "David Adjaye Houses".

http://www.adjaye.com