[ad_1]
Famend Ghanaian British architect David Adjaye on July 4 introduced that he could be stepping away from plenty of initiatives, the New York Occasions reviews. The information got here within the speedy wake of allegations, first reported within the Monetary Occasions that very same day, that he sexually assaulted or harassed three of his workers. The ladies, who haven’t been named, “accused him and his agency of various types of exploitation — from alleged sexual assault and sexual harassment by him to a poisonous work tradition — which have gone unchecked for years,” based on the FT. The publication characterised Adjaye’s accusers as “black ladies of their forties on the time the alleged abuse occurred, . . . single moms, well-connected professionally and from influential households.” All three are stated to have identified Adjaye earlier than working for him, and to have shared mates and acquaintances with him.
Adjaye in an announcement firmly rejected “any claims of sexual misconduct, abuse or felony wrongdoing,” asserting that the “allegations are unfaithful, distressing for me and my household and run counter to every little thing I stand for.” He contended as an alternative that he “entered into relationships which although solely consensual, blurred the boundaries between my skilled and private lives.” Adjaye acknowledged that he was “ashamed” and “deeply sorry. To revive belief and accountability, I can be instantly searching for skilled assist with a view to be taught from these errors to make sure that they by no means occur once more.”
Shortly after the allegations have been made public, Adjaye relinquished his position as architectural adviser to Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, and suspended work on the British Holocaust Memorial, which he was commissioned to create. In an announcement, he affirmed that he would quit all ceremonial roles and trusteeships in order that the allegations did “not change into a distraction.” The Multnomah County Library in Gresham, Oregon, introduced that it had severed ties with Adjaye, whom it had earlier touted as one of many forthcoming construction’s architects.
Adjaye based Adjaye Associates in 2000. Among the many architectural agency’s notable initiatives are Smithsonian’s Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition, in Washington, DC; Ruby Metropolis, a brand new artwork heart in San Antonio, Texas; the Sugar Hill Combined-Use Improvement, in Harlem, New York; and the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Artwork on the Hutchins Middle at Harvard College. Present initiatives embrace the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Nationwide Cathedral of Ghana in Accra. Adjaye was knighted in 2017. In 2020, he received the distinguished Isamu Noguchi prize and have become the primary Black architect to win the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal within the prize’s 173-year historical past.
[ad_2]
