November 3, 2025

By Justin Davidson

Photo: Albert Vecerka

The term hostile architecture refers to design that’s intended to discourage relaxation: divided benches, spiked ledges, inclined seats. David Adjaye has tweaked the concept to produce buildings that should be inviting but aren’t, the architectural equivalent of a bouncer’s deadpan Can I help you? As one of the last of the global superstars, Adjaye has spent 25 years attracting clients to his chilly virtuosity, which leaves me wondering whether they hire him for the austerity of his designs or detect a warmth that eludes me.

Two years after his reputation imploded in a sexual harassment scandal, he’s returned with two major new projects: the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Princeton University Art Museum, both well under way when he withdrew from the public eye. I use the personal pronoun here, although no serious and complicated project springs from an auteur’s imagination; it emerges from the collaboration of designers, engineers, landscape architects, and specialized consultants. Adjaye Associates is a company with more than 100 architects in offices on three continents, and when these two clients scrambled to put some distance between themselves and the founder, one of his partners, Pascal Saban, and another firm, Cooper Robertson, took the lead on both. But it’s still his work. Clients hired Adjaye’s outfit not only for its technical expertise and ingenuity, but also for the leader’s aesthetic and stature. His favored palette—graphite-hues concrete, inky aggregate, black steel, stained wood, and bronze—is as recognizable in its way as Frank Gehry’s woozy curves or Zaha Hadid’s swoops. That’s why his sidelining was so disruptive.

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