2 2 Frozen Music Maestro
respectively). “The building is conceived looking at two
important references,” he explains. “Art, in my personal
view, is a process of perception; and this building has
an optical trick perspective. The second is pattern as a
predominant motive generator, an idea from southern
culture seen in Eastern buildings and West African batik
prints.” He describes the effect as, “off geometry that
creates a shifting dynamic of pattern using solid and void
that works in both form and perspective.” These ideas of
non-Euclidian and non-Cartesian geometry are at the root
of most of Adjaye’s work. “It is about mixing northern
hemisphere ideas about specificity and southern
hemisphere ideas of scalelessness, pattern and texture.”
The inIVA/ABP building is a good case in point of what
might best be described as a Modern African perspective.
Adjaye refuses to be drawn completely about this, however.
“The building offers a different view to the status quo,”
he explains. “It is a host, a vessel to take ideas and stories.
My perceptions as the creator are no more important than
anyone else’s.”
The building is a host, a vessel
for both ideas and stories.
This unwillingness to completely impose his own aesthetic
interpretations on his designs is characteristic of Adjaye’s
approach to architecture. For instance, in contrast to some
other ‘Super-architects’, he isn’t interested in grandiose
buildings that are more an extension of the architect’s ego
than anything connected with consideration for the
building’s inhabitants. “I don’t find office buildings
interesting. I don’t find large phallic towers inspiring.”
Also, unusually for a young black man in the public
eye, Adjaye isn’t adverse to being seen as a role model
for young people. He lectures frequently (Harvard,
Cambridge, Cornell, RCA, to mention a few), and has
presented a couple of episodes of the architectural series,
Dreamspaces on BBC Television. His practice is also going
from strength to strength. He has recently been
commissioned to design his first building in the USA,
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. Not an
artist, maybe. But an artist’s architect, certainly.
Images top and bottom: Exhibition space for the
Black British Style exhibition at the Victoria & Albert