Public Response

The architecture community—and Adjaye Associates clients—respond to allegations of sexual misconduct by David Adjaye.

David Adjaye has been accused of sexual misconduct by three former female employees. As originally reported in The Financial Times , the accusations range from harassment to physical assault. The women detailed abuse going back years at his firm, Adjaye Associates, which they alleged had fostered a toxic work culture. Adjaye denies these claims.

The London-based firm, which also has offices in New York and Accra, Ghana, is largely known for its cultural projects. After founding the firm in 2000, Adjaye rose to prominence following the 2016 opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which his firm designed. The following year, Adjaye was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

The allegations detail grotesque mismanagement throughout the firm, but largely focus on the opening of the firm’s Accra office in 2018. They include not only sexual assault, but failure to pay employees on time as well as visa insecurity. Through his lawyer, Adjaye told FT that there were cash flow issues in the early days of the Accra office, which “functioned as a start-up.”

In a statement provided to AN from Kendal Global Advisory, a communications and crisis management firm, Adjaye said: “I absolutely reject any claims of sexual misconduct, abuse or criminal wrongdoing. These allegations are untrue, distressing for me and my family and run counter to everything I stand for. I am ashamed to say that I entered into relationships which though entirely consensual, blurred the boundaries between my professional and personal lives. I am deeply sorry. To restore trust and accountability, I will be immediately seeking professional help in order to learn from these mistakes to ensure that they never happen again.”

Almost immediately after the FT story broke (which had been in the works for a year), Adjaye stepped down as a member of London mayor Sadiq Khan’s panel of design advocates and resigned as a member of the Serpentine Gallery’s board of trustees, and Adjaye Associates paused work on the U.K. Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre (which Adjaye has now stepped back from).

On July 7, three days after the initial investigation was published, FT reported that Adjaye had “disclosed private legal letters and the names of women he allegedly sexually abused to the government of Ghana as part of efforts to save his reputation.” Those names were then leaked to the Ghanaian press.

Other clients of Adjaye, and organizations he was associated with, have canceled projects or verbally showed concern over their association with the architect.

Adjaye Associates’ design of the Princeton University Art Museum continue as the client’s work with the firm is largely complete. In Portland, Oregon, the East County Library was slated to proceed with a local architect and without Adjaye Associates prior to FT ’s report, the client told FT Bedrock, the developer executing the waterfront master plan that Adjaye Associates is working on in Cleveland, said that the firm

At a press conference in late June, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the state will no longer formally link the real estate developer Vornado’s redevelopment to plans for a new Penn Station. Amid controversy regarding Vornado’s involvement, numerous proposals and aesthetic disagreements over the new station have further marred the public-private partnership project, Hochul said the state would be taking a stronger leadership position. Newly released renderings from the governor’s office show a brighter Penn Station that is aesthetically contiguous with the new Long Island Rail Road section of the station. Renderings depict a midblock train hall framed under an undulating glass ceiling and multilevel concourse colored with white paneling, though not much seating—the common, and warranted, gripe about Moynihan Train Hall. KK is reevaluating whether it will continue to work with Adjaye on the project. Adjaye will be stepping away from a planned project in Chicago’s Old Town, developer Fern Hill said, and the de Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Massachusetts has placed a planned exhibition of Adjaye’s sculpture work on hold indefinitely. Adjaye Associates was also working on the International Slavery Museum and Merseyside Maritime Museum, for which National Museums Liverpool is the client. The museum told The New York Times that it was taking the allegations seriously, but did not indicate that the project status had changed. A Rice University spokesperson said that the school might end its relationship with Adjaye Associates, which has been contracted to design a new student center. At Vermont’s Shelburne Museum, where Adjaye Associates is designing an expansion to house Native American art, the museum said its work with Adjaye Associates is in early design stages and is being reevaluated. The Africa Institute in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, has canceled the Adjaye Associates–designed campus announced in 2021.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) said that anyone who has been a victim of violations of its code of conduct should report such matters so they can conduct a full investigation.

Clearly, the architectural community’s reaction against Adjaye has been strong. Writing in The Guardian, architecture critic Rowan Moore argued that the cult of worship in architecture, which often results in complicity with starchitect men committing sexual assault or otherwise predatory actions in the workplace, originates in the classroom studio model. Competitive studio culture and unfair compensation contribute to the starchitect myth and power associated with it. Let not the attention on Adjaye give the impression that it is only starchitects who act like this.

On Instagram, former Adjaye employee Ngozi Olojede detailed a highly disorganized workplace in Adjaye Associates’ New York office where employees were pressured to work long hours: a culture that Adjaye himself encouraged. Olojede also said that Adjaye “installed very white senior leadership” and that she had heard about a sexual assault Adjaye allegedly committed against an employee in South Africa prior to its recounting in FT . Another former Adjaye Associates employee, Ewa Lenart, described a similar culture of abuse and strict discipline for workers who “spoke up.”

Olojede crucially noted that workplace protections for women in many African countries are lacking. As Adjaye Associates’ work on the National Cathedral of Ghana and Edo Museum of West African Art in Nigeria seems to be continuing as planned (though much skepticism surrounds the cathedral project), the discrepancies in workplace labor protections and the lack of similar public dismissal by clients cannot be overlooked. As conversations over canceling projects in progress by Adjaye Associates continue, the importance of not reducing a firm’s work to its leader (ship) is important. The work that has gone into these projects has come from employees who have worked incredibly long hours and is seen through by the labor of executive architects and architects of record and, ultimately, the construction workers who install the projects. This is not to say that the work of Adjaye Associates (especially if it retains that name) will not be left untarnished, but that the architectural work attributed to Adjaye was never fully his to begin with. CW