Architect David Adjaye OBE is the recipient of the 2016 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT. The $100K cash prize, to be awarded at a gala in his honor, also includes an artist residency at MIT in spring 2016, during which Adjaye will participate in four public programs. These will include panels and symposia focused on the future of the museum, library, and campus, as well as a keynote lecture about his own body of work. Adjaye’s current high-profile architectural projects include the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington and The Studio Museum in Harlem.
“In my career I have sought to cross creative platforms, to collaborate with artists and designers from different disciplines and to focus on the creative discourse surrounding the act of making things,” Adjaye remarked upon receiving the award. “I believe it is this dialogue— the cultural intersection — that moves us forward, generates new possibilities, and creates greatness. The Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT has long stood for exactly this principle, and it for this reason I am both supremely honoured and supremely humbled to be named as this year’s recipient.”
David Adjaye OBE 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. He founded Adjaye Associates in 2000 and immediately won several prestigious commissions. In Oslo he designed the Nobel Peace Centre (completed in 2005) in the shell of a disused railway station. In London his design for the Whitechapel Idea Store (2005) pioneered a new approach to the provision of information services. Later projects in London included the Stephen Lawrence Centre (2007), with teaching and community spaces; Rivington Place (2007), an exhibition venue and resource centre; and the Bernie Grant Arts Centre (2007) for performing arts.
Adjaye Associates now has offices in London, New York, and Accra, and is working throughout the world.
