Lui references David Adjaye, a London based Architect who was recently awarded the commission to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture, as well as
a student’s proposal for "a Meier-esque home-cum-crematorium" situated on the border between Mexico and the United States.
ABSTRACT
"Race is a painfully awkward topic in architecture, while culture remains the go-to book for, uh, copying. David Adjaye, said in an interview with New York Magazine in 2007, “If a Japanese architect talks about Shintoism, everyone goes, ‘Wow.’ If an African architect talks about an African village, it is somehow weird in the Western context.
...there’s something notably missing from all those glossy photos: the controversy. Before Adjaye’s win, some minority architects criticized the panel for the fact that most of the final firms were predominantly white (the special six were: Foster + Partners, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, Moody Nolan, Moshe Safdie and Associates and Adjaye’s team.) Adjaye, after building the Stephen Lawrence Centre, which commemorates a murdered black architecture student, was accused of having won the competition because he too was black. Both controversies, however, remained mostly in the blogosphere; The New York Times did not mention it, and The Architect’s Newspaper relegated race controversy to a puny last paragraph.
Why the silence? Why is it OK to talk about what age-old African architecture influenced the new Museum (“Yoruban” columns) but it’s not OK to talk about how David Adjaye’s experiences as a black Brit influences his work?
...It has already become reasonably in vogue to hire Jewish American architects to design Holocaust museums and memorials; it is understood that their backgrounds and their experiences, as well as the stories and legacies of their families, inform these designers’ work. But still modern architectural discourse shies away from personal experience, from race and identity, in favor of weaker references to alien cultures — like water for chocolate, we draw the works of ancient builders instead of speaking about the stories that mean the most to us."
An anonymous comment read:
"Architecture should be about the work. Adjaye is a great architect and his background is very interesting as well, but that is a different subject. The work is the product of many factors but the Idea is the main thing and one needs no experience to have a great idea... Race and gender can inform idea consciously or unconsciously but detract, in my opinion, from the main story. This article assumes that members of an ethnic group share values and influences and I find this similar to stereotypical thinking, which should be vigilantly eschewed."
THOUGHTS?
To read complete article and related comments visit:
http://cornellsun.com/section/arts/content/2009/04/21/gag-order-race-architecture
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