ARCHITECTURE
Renowned architect and Rolex mentor Sir David Adjaye helps protégé Mariam Karama bring forth an innovative project in her native Niger.
Sir David Adjaye and Mariam Kamara
You may not know his name, or even recognise his face, but you’re likely to have seen or even stepped inside one of his many extraordinary designs. “David Adjaye is one of the great architectural visionaries of our time. His work – deeply rooted in both the present moment and the complex context of history – has envisioned new ways for culture to be represented and reflected in the built environment,” wrote Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, for Time magazine’s 2017 list of The 100 Most Influential People.
“Every architect has to contend with gravity – but when David designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture [in Washington, DC], the challenges of that elemental force went far beyond the ordinary. How can a design acknowledge, and embody, the weight of this monumental history and yet transcend it right before your eyes?”
It’s his ability to answer questions such as these that has made 53-year-old Adjaye one of the most sought-after architects of his generation, and a natural choice for Rolex’s distinguished Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Born in Tanzania to Ghanian parents and raised largely in the UK, Adjaye set up his own firm in 1994 and currently has offices in London, New York and Accra with projects in the US, UK, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Besides the US$540 million National Museum of African American History and Culture – named Cultural Event of the Year in 2016 by The New York Times – he’s been commissioned for several landmark projects including the National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in London, luxury high-rise 130 William in New York and the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi. He’s also won a number of prestigious awards and been knighted for services to architecture.
Sitting across from Adjaye in his London office, after observing him checking in with his various project teams, his passion for architecture as well as social, cultural and environmental issues is evident. So too is his interest in his home continent of Africa, where he designed the National Cathedral of Ghana currently being constructed in the capital city Accra along with several other smaller projects.
When it came time to select a protégé for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative – which is designed to bring together the world’s great artists in the fields of dance, film, music, theatre, visual arts, literature and architecture with young talents for a period of creative collaboration – Adjaye therefore focused his search on upand-coming African architects.
“I was very interested to see if we could really send a signal to the continent,” he explains. “Africa is one of the last places that’s rapidly starting to become industrialised and urbanised, and it’s going to need architects to help guide this vision. They’re critical to making sure cities have success.”
After reviewing a number “incredible” talents, Adjaye settled on Niger-born Mariam Kamara. The one-time software engineer earned a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Washington, Seattle, and set up her own firm, atelier masōmī, in 2014 to create “innovative solutions for 21st-century needs”.
“In the end I selected Mariam because she stood for me a set of unique coordinates that were very special,” Adjaye says. “She’s a young architect who struck out on her own. And she’s committed to her country of origin. Niger is an amazing place, and a very interesting mix of East and West Africa. I felt that was such a unique position and I wanted to engage more with what was going on there and what she represented.”
While Rolex encourages its artists to spend at least six weeks interacting over the course of the two-year programme, mentors and protégés are free to determine where, how and when they carry out that commitment. In Adjaye’s case, he was particularly interested in working
with Kamara on a project in Niger and really getting to know the country through her eyes.
“I thought there was such generosity in that and it was all the more exciting for me because I come from a country where there are huge challenges as well as amazing opportunities,” she says. “It’s a desert country, which means from an architectural point of view we always come across issues around heat and thermal comfort. It’s also an incredibly young country, where 75 percent of the population is below the age of 25. And the literacy rate is relatively low, which means that there are, again, these challenges but there are also huge opportunities in terms of what you can do there.”
Adjaye was likewise excited about the potential of helping to shape a built identity for an emerging country with a unique blend of cultures and influences, a kind of architecture that worked in tune with the climate and the traditions that came before it. Together they toured several parts of the country, from the capital Niamey to Kamara’s family village, and eventually got to work designing a cultural centre in Niamey.
According to Kamara, Niamey was designed by French colonists in 1937 with the French and indigenous sides separated by the Niger River. After colonisation ended, this division resulted in the wealthy elites moving into the former French side and the indigenous side becoming more disadvantaged. It wasn’t until a leader named Boubou Hama proposed joining the two sides with a “cultural valley” consisting of public projects along the river that a new vision for the city emerged.
Kamara knew that the cultural centre had to be along the promenade, to provide a much-needed gathering place in a Muslim city with a dearth of public facilities. But rather than trying to impose her ideas on the project, she began by talking to locals and in particular young residents.
“What were they thinking about, how did they see their place in the city and what did they aspire to? Some really interesting things came to the surface, one of the main things being a concern for nature,” she says. “In a city that’s really, really dry they were worried about green spaces, and places they could go and feel a sense of peace. They really wanted a place that would reflect the local tradition. They
KAMARA PAID GREAT ATTENTION TO THE SELECTION OF MATERIALS AND CLIMATE MITIGATION
were very, very adamant about access to books. And they wanted a place that was original, that they could take a lot of pride in knowing that it was in their city.”
Kamara also leaned heavily on her mentor, over their frequent trips and WhatsApp exchanges, as her plans for the centre as well as her ideas for the city’s architectural identity took shape. Over time the project expanded from a library to include spaces for workshops, performances and exhibitions, even a cafe. It also needed places for the community to gather and enjoy the landscape. “And, you know, once people are there, then you start thinking about how hot it is and what do we do about the sun? So I had to think about how to provide shade,” Kamara says. “It came in the form of creating these really tall structures that would help shade the space, but also anchor the outside spaces with these pure sculptural forms.”
Indeed, Kamara’s designs for the Niamey Cultural Centre stand out for the use of these towering semi-circles that also serve to ventilate the area by drawing hot air up and allowing it to escape through the top. She also made sure to avoid creating a single massive building and instead providing “the kind of place where you can just casually happen by. You don’t have to go into any of the structures; you can actually be part of the life of the project while you’re walking through the promenade.”
Kamara also paid great attention to the selection of materials and issues around climate mitigation, using locally sourced raw earth bricks (which give the illusion of the buildings growing from the ground) and creating a rainwater harvesting system that maintains the newly formed landscape.
“Sustainability is not just about, you know, having solar panels or those types of things,” she says. “It’s about creating a system that can really thrive, where you can do as little harm as possible and really go in the direction that things naturally want to naturally go rather than trying to apply some kind of strange solution.”
City leaders are planning to start construction on the Niamey Cultural Centre within this year, and once completed it will be one shining example of the continent’s promise. “I think the idea is coming,” Adjaye says when asked about an African language of architecture. “There’s so much potential building to be done and it has this incredibly specific, as Mariam was saying, geography and cultures given its unique form. It’s an amazing question and one that’s going to be answered faster than, say, the 500 years that Europe has had to reflect on, simply because of the industrialisation of construction. We can build much, much faster. So this might be answered in 15 years or even 10.”