'Trying to look at architecture differently'.

• Position: David Adjaye - Interview

DAVID ADJAYE is recognized as one of the leading British architects of his generation. His innovative and engaging designs emphasize the experience of architecture within an urban environment Born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to Ghanaian parents, he was educated in Africa before moving to London, where he now lives and works. Since receiving his MA in Architecture at Royal College of Art in 1993, he has built a reputation as a visionary architect with an artistic sense for using materials and showcasing lighting, winning a number of prestigious commissions and prizes. In 2000, he reformed his studio as Adjaye/Associates. A role model for young people, Mr. Adjaye lectures frequently at universities worldwide. He has co-presented for BBC "Dreamspaces", a television series on modern architecture, and hosted a radio programme featuring interviews with leading architects. He has recently published two books on his work: Houses: Recycling Reconfiguring Rebuilding (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2005) and Making Public Buildings: Specificity Customization Imbrication (London: Whitechapel, 2006). The exhibition, "Making Public Buildings", a mid-career retrospective of Adjaye's public projects, opened at the Whitechapel Art Gallery of London in January 2006 and will travel to a number of cities around the world.

Mr. Adjaye spoke with Horst Rutsch of the UN Chronicle in June 2006.

HORST RUTSCH: "Making Public Buildings", the mid-career restrospective of your work, seems to point, not only to a method, but also towards a purpose. Three concepts come to mind: multiplicity, accessibility and engagement. How do you respond to these challenges?

DAVID ADJAYE: These concepts can be found in architecture, as well as in the social sciences and global discussions. I was trying to look at architecture differently, through another lens than the one it's usually looked at. In my work, I am trying to speak to this other so-called informal agenda that operates. This has come from me--I was born in Africa, I lived in Africa, but I was educated in Europe--and in my own time I've started to rediscover Africa for myself, without my parents. I think that my heritage has had a profound effect on my way of seeing.

I was very much struck by the notion of the informal as it relates to architecture. Are there lessons to be learned from the production of ordinary folk, as they make the things that become their built environment and, in turn, affect them? It became really clear that, in the absence of the high patron with vast amounts of money, architecture in its traditional sense obviously doesn't exist in these communities, but architecture as a living art does. The meaning of habitation--and the way in which habitation is made and appropriated, exhibiting a play, even at the softest levels, in terms of aesthetics--is incredibly powerful.

When I started working as an architect in London, I decided that I was not going to work immediately for multinational commercial developers. I didn't want to move straight into that world of stone joints, window mullions and selecting panels. Instead, what was incredibly interesting to me was exploring this notion of engagement and of whatever the public might be. I didn't want to work from that patronizing position of claiming to represent the public. Instead, I wanted to really question the purpose of architecture--especially in the European context, where it became so difficult to even use certain words anymore when describing architecture--namely how one posits the notion of pulling together the assembly of things to have any kind of meaning to a particular community or group.

I'm not necessarily saying that this has meaning to these groups. What I mean is that my strategy is an attempt to bring down certain tendencies and bring up certain ignored positions--a rebalancing--in the hope that there's an equilibrium that allows for an accessibility to occur which is not so simplistic. It's not about handrails or ramps, and not about patronizing, but about a melting of hierarchies of knowledge. This allows people who've never encountered a piece of architecture to still understand that something is going on, that something maybe relates to them specifically in the world. So this notion of imbrication is very important for me. In my work, something I've pursued very deliberately is this notion of "not far away, but closer and closer still"--so close, in fact, that it's difficult to notice it as an object. It is about trying to move architecture to the point where it acts almost like a cloth, acts as a device, which moves seamlessly from the body to the building.

It just struck me that in trying to rediscover any social agenda within architecture, its collective agenda, there has to be a new kind of engagement. The sixties were brilliant; it was about an attempt, inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, to engage with this notion of the social, but done in an objectifying way. And I think for that reason it had huge failings because, in objectifying the social so much, it lost its rhyming potential with how society moves and operates, vibrates and resonates. We don't have the capacity to understand that in an empirical way and translate it. We don't say, "People migrate in a group like this, so then we make buildings like this", or "People do this, so we build like this"--that's the desire of the social scientist-architect, trying to engineer a better world.

HR: You've helped to popularize architecture through the BBC. This has given you the possibility to select architects like Oscar Neimeyer and Charles Correa to discuss concepts and explore ideas about architecture that are close to your own. Both Neimeyer, in Brazil, and Correa, in India, were innovative in monumental as well as residential architecture. (1) Then there's also that element of urban planning that comes into play, the way the problem of urbanization plays out in their work.

DA: Yes, that's what it was all about. First, on the idea of research in public. For me, there are two ways of operating: discovery can work in that hermetic, science-like way, conducting experiments in the laboratory and finding an opening. But I was more interested in an older model, where the investigation of knowledge is a public affair. I felt that this was incredibly important because my exploration was about an...