David Adjaye's Sclera Reborn
John Hill
6. February 2019
Photo: Ed Reeve
A fragment of Sclera, an oval-shaped wooden pavilion David Adjaye designed for the 2008 London Design Festival, has been recreated as part of David Adjaye: Making Memory, now on display at the Design Museum in London.
David Adjaye: Making Memory opened February 2 as "a new exhibition that explores the role of monuments and memorials in the 21st century, through seven projects by celebrated British-Ghanaian architect, Sir David Adjaye OBE." These projects include the acclaimed Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C and the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Center in London. Adjaye Associates, working with Ron Arad, was selected in October 2017 to design the latter, which is in the process of gaining planning approval.
While the UK Holocaust Memorial may be the impetus for an exhibition in London focused on Adjaye's designs of memorials and monuments, it's full-scale installations like the Sclera fragment that do the best job in conveying the spatial and tectonic qualities of his projects. Designed for the Size + Matter project at the 2008 London Design Festival, the pavilion, made entirely of Tulipwood, was later sold in a benefit auction for £145,250. So the fragment in Making Memory is new, made again from American Tulipwood and immersing visitors in a room about the project.