David Adjaye: Making Memory

02 FEBRUARY - 05 MAY 2019 AT THE DESIGN MUSEUM

“The monument is no longer a representation, it is an experience of time and place that is available to everyone. Whether it’s for a nation, a race, a community, or a person, it is really used as a device to talk about the many things facing people across the planet.” - David Adjaye

Making Memory explores the role of monuments and memorials in the 21st century, through seven projects, built and unbuilt, by celebrated British-Ghanaian architect, Sir David Adjaye OBE. The exhibition explores the idea of the monument as a record of who we are and as a way of memorializing triumphs and failures. Opening with a visual survey of monuments and memorials, starting with the Acropolis of Athens (447 BC) until the 2018 Millicent Fawcett statue by Gillian Wearing, it shows that contemporary monuments are no longer merely static objects in a field, plaques, statues or neo-classical scuptures, but dynamic and complex spaces that serve a wider purpose. The exhibition features the controversial UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in London, designed in collaboration with Ron Arad Architects, as well as a design for a monument to civil rights leaders Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr. Also on show is the Mass Extinction Memorial Observatory (“Memo”), an on-going monument to the world’s extinct species; designed as a continuous spiral walkway, it will be carved with the images of 860 species assessed as extinct since the Dodo. The 3-metre wide “bell of biodiversity”, placed at the structure’s centre, will toll each time a species goes extinct.

David Adjaye: Plan and section sketches for the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. Photograph ©The London List

Each project is presented in a dedicated room alongside objects and architectural details that informed their designs, for example the Yoruban caryatid, a traditional West African carved figure with a crown, that inspired the form of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, a museum in Washington DC that takes visitors on a journey through the history of the Black experience in the USA. Honoring the social, economic and cultural contributions of African Americans, the museum is constructed on the last remaining parcel on the National Mall, which already contains a number of significant museums and memorials. The room dedicated to the National Cathedral of Ghana is populated with traditional Asante umbrellas which, along with the Baoman ceremonial canopy, and traditional tabernacle shelters, influenced the form of the Cathedral’s “canopy like” roof, combining motifs from Christianity with Kingship and Western African tribal traditions. “Democratisation does not mean that monuments cease to be relevant,” says Adjaye, “it requires the monument to be transformed, so that it has an inbuilt openness that can be approached and understood from many points of view.”

Ben Weaver

David Adjaye: Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. Photograph ©The London List

David Adjaye: National Cathedral of Ghana. Photograph ©The London List