David Adjaye Receives the WSJ’s 2013 Innovator Award for Architecture

Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture

When I see the innovative talent of the likes of Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye, I simply include him in my fold of third culture kids and beam at his success.   My own experience of having taught for 10 years at an international school had afforded me the amazing opportunity to work with young people who were multilingual, typically had 

Architect David Adjaye

lived in 4 or 5 countries and fluidly moved throughout the world as if boundaries were false impediments, absorbing the ideas, the aesthetics and the many ways of being from their host countries.  Adjaye was one of these global nomads as a child and continues to be one today.   The experiences he has collected along the way account for the singular and spectacular energy his architectural designs convey.  I had the honor to hear him speak and share his design vision on several occasions when he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Penn.

    Selected as the chief architect for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture, which is due to open in 2015, as well as the designer of the Nobel Peace Center in Norway and the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management in Russia, Adjaye is leaving his mark throughout the world.  The Wall Street Journal just named him its 2013 Architecture Innovator for an affordable housing complex he has designed in Harlem’s Sugar Hill neighborhood in New York City.  It is a combination of apartments, a children’s museum and preschool.

 “In outline, the high-rise, which will also provide housing for the homeless, is a big, chunky block with a serrated upper story; its bulk, along with its ridged panels of graphite-cast concrete, give it more than its share of grit and brawn. Yet look closer at those panels: Visible from the right angle and in the right light, the cladding bears the traces of a floral pattern, enormous roses etched into the rough surface,” said Ivan Volner of the Wall Street Journal( Click here for the entire article: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303376904579137492664041948

The Sugar Hill Apartments

According to Broadway Housing Communities, applications are now being accepted for the Sugar Hill Apartments and the Sugar Hill Pre-School. “Residential occupancy is estimated within the second quarter of 2014, and will include 124 affordable rental apartments, with 25 units set aside for homeless households and 1 for a superintendent.  The remaining 98 affordable apartments will serve individuals and families at 30%, 50% 60% and 80% of AMI (area median income).  Income eligible residents of Manhattan Community District 9 will receive a preference for 50% of the apartments within the lottery or 49 units.  Persons with disabilities and NYC Municipal employees also receive preferences.”

For more detailed information about the Sugar Hill Housing Lottery and the application process go to bhc.org/lottery or call the Sugar Hill rent-up hotline, 347-379-4112.

Here is a link to a recent feature the New Yorker did on Adjaye: http://www.broadwayhousing.org/2013/09/a-sense-of-place/