R.I.

A
Essay paper on analysis

DAVID ADJAYE

David Adjaye’s father was into the political profession .

He was a Diplomat thus , David Adjaye continuously had to keep switching
countries , and had never settled in one culture but had gathered an immense
amount of experiences .
His younger brother got brain damage and paralysis thus his father had to leave
the job and find a settling job , thus they permanently shifted to London .
After settling down, these experiences and incident of brothers' paralysis made
David come to a narrative , that building is for everyone as they always had to lift ,
push the wheelchair as buildings were never designed for all users .
Narrative for everyone was one of his early life lessons.

Adjaye sir thinks we are always a product of what we do and where we came
from — we are shaped by our background. David adjaye was very inspired by
the world and the things that he saw, but what inspired him wasn’t the artifacts
or the quality of architecture, but the power of architecture to shape societies.
That was more powerful . Then of course later, he found that profound structures
have a way of shaping the way in which a society sees itself, and that became very
important.
He draws all the time, and makes lots of models. They don't do it for nostalgic
reasons. A 3D virtual thing is fantastic for doing certain things, but actually in the
end, the presence of a certain material has an impact on your senses. we’re
sensory beings. We have a sort of multi-sensory apparatus, and that is how we
simulate space. That relationship to materiality is something that computers can’t
really give us. Although we can try to simulate weight in virtual reality,. the
sense of moisture, or dampness, or dryness of a material still requires
physicality.

The computer builds models, so to design in the computer is to know what you’re
doing, or to find it in a systematic way. The conceptual way of thinking is to
uncover what I call the ‘scrambled notes of the brain’ through the notations of the
hand. the hand unscrambles the layers of information that are complexly laid on
top of each other, and you’re unfiltering it. That act is something that the
computer does not allow me to do. sketching is still the only thing that allows him
to unpack the thoughts into a precise moment. For him sketching is unfiltering
which no technologist has managed to do yet. Sketching is essential. The
computer requires us to know what we need to know, but first we need to
unpack the thoughts.

He is part of a generation of architects that has moved away from the idea of a
signature style. His work is more about the specifics of culture, place,
geography and so on. If there is a unifying element – it might perhaps be his
approach to light and its treatment as a primary material. But every context is
different, and every context has a new scenario. Rather than searching for the
universal, he looks for the specific. This is what defines his projects and roots
them to their context within the city at that time, or the group of people that
might be bringing up that project at that time. So he finds that even if he may
want to, it’s almost impossible to make the same project again and again.

While designing his "individualist" buildings, Adjaye uses materials, light, new
crafted techniques, and his artistic mentality as the major elements to create his
"personalized forms" with new tectonics and formal mediations.
His approach is to design from the inside out and his buildings have been said to
‘unfold cinematically’.
The starting point is to gain an understanding of a client’s needs and the way in
which a sequence of spaces will be used.
He believes architecture presents opportunities for transformation—materially,
conceptually, sociologically—and can act as a catalytic mechanism for bridging
and creating relationships between the human body, society and the world.
Notions of place-making, identity, memory and meaning, are central to his design
process as he aims to create structures conducive to positive forms of human
transformation.

He thinks that the ability to be able to test yourself in many conditions attunes if
we have the ability to understand that we’re making architecture — no longer in a
place, in a village, or a town, but for the planet.
it’s not about regionalism, it’s past that or moving that forward. For him, it’s the
architect’s responsibility to construct the planet.
We can do that in an isolated bubble, but then the ecology of the construction
industry is utterly global. there is really no such thing as a local practice, even if we
pretend there is.
We are using things that are coming from around the world. in a way, he thinks
there’s that planetary responsibility. That responsibility in its purest sense — if we
want to be a purist — is about the experience of the difference.
 Where to begin it's small and we are this big In terms of what it is It's just
kind of series of electrons going of in our head so it's not even measurable but
it's an idea And we are this big and suddenly it becomes this big And we are
this small in it And so there's this kind of magical shifting of the electricity
and the power of that is addictive I still can't get over it And it's why he is so
excited by architecture.
When he comes to the studio he does not come with much expectations about
how he should feel. Sometimes he feels elevated, sometimes sad, sometimes
freaked out so the studio has to be a space that shall absorb all that because work
doesn't come out of just feeling great or just from a great idea.
For an architect there is something just deeply magical about the process of
imagination and research and the feeling of form and then to be in it because in a
way there is this kind of magical scaling.