7 Quotes by David Adjaye

Buildings are deeply emotive structures which form our psyche. People think they’re just things they maneuver through, but the makeup of a person is influenced by the nature of spaces.

Buildings for me represent opportunities of agency, transformation, and storytelling. They are not just artifacts. There is this big tradition of buildings-as-artifacts – constructed artifacts – but for me they are these incredible sites of negotiation.

Context is so important, not to mimic but to become part of the place. I wanted a building that acknowledges its surroundings.

I’m totally into architecture for all strata of society. High design should not just be for rich people.

If you just live in New York and you only know New York, you know a certain kind of condition of formality and informality. By being able to go to another context and to be able to use that as a counter foil to the context you know, you are about to see a wider range.

The first 10 years, I was just building just to understand what I was doing and I didn’t trust my intuition to just produce. Then, in the last five years, I have really been reflecting on what I am producing and what it is doing.

Africa is an extraordinary opportunity at the moment.