David Adjaye: houses: recycling, reconfiguring, rebuilding

David Adjaye is the most exciting and accomplished young architect to emerge on the international scene in many years. The combination of material inventiveness, creative clients and modest budgets has produced a refined and comprehensive body of design work - and Adjaye is only 38 years old. He was born in Tanzania the son of a diplomat, and his wide-ranging education, both cultural and formal, has allowed him to respond deftly to wildly differing projects, from gritty urban contexts - such as London's Whitechapel multimedia centre and an extension for New York's New Museum - to elegant pastoral retreats in more natural surroundings. The innovation in Adjaye's career is exemplified in his residential works for a wide variety of clients and budgets. Perhaps his best-known projects are the houses he has created in a range of settings for such creatives as artist Chris Ofili and actor Ewan McGregor. The winner of a competition to design a new building for the Nobel Foundation and the architect of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Adjaye is currently enjoying enormous worldwide attention in both specialist and journalistic presses. This publication, his first monograph and an object of beauty in its own right, is a timely celebration of a young talent at the height - and yet at the beginning - of his creative powers.