Designer of the Year – David Adjaye

Photography by WorldRedEye on December 8th, 2011 in Arts, Celebrity, Parties

Craig Robins, David Adjaye, & Jason Sellards (Jake Shears) of Scissor Sisters

Miami, FL – December 2, 2011 – Design Miami/, the global forum for design, is pleased to announce that David Adjaye, OBE, Principal Architect of Adjaye Associates, has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Designer of the Year Award. A site-specific installation by Adjaye, commissioned for the fair, will be presented at the 2011 edition of Design Miami/, November 29-December 4, 2011. Each December, the Design Miami/ Designer of the Year Award recognizes an internationally renowned architect, designer, or studio whose body of work demonstrates unmatched quality, innovation and influence, while expanding the boundaries of design. The Designer of the Year must demonstrate a consistent history of outstanding work, along with a significant new project, career milestone, or other noteworthy achievement within the previous twelve months. Past Designer of the Year winners include Zaha Hadid, Marc Newson, Tokujin Yoshioka, the Campana Brothers, Maarten Baas, and Konstantin Grcic.

The Award presented Adjaye with the opportunity to design a site-specific installation for Design Miami/ 2011. His pavilion, entitled Genesis will welcome visitors to the fair’s temporary structure on Miami Beach. Given an open brief for the commission by Design Miami/, Adjaye has created a pavilion that introduces the essence of his architectural ideas to a wider public in a temporary context. Composed of hundreds of vertical wooden planks morphing into organic interior seating and opening up to the sky and surrounding environment, the triangular pavilion will serve as entryway to the fair, a community gathering area and a space for respite during the lively week. Choreographing these diverse functions in one structure exhibits Adjaye’s ability to organize space in a way that effortlessly guides the user and creates an engaging spatial experience through a transcendent use of materials.