Sir David Adjaye has been selected as design architect for the new Princeton University Art Museum. Working in collaboration with executive architect Cooper Robertson, Adjaye will engage with the design of a “cultural gateway” located on the museum’s current site at the center of Princeton’s campus.
The new museum will present “dramatically enlarged space” to exhibit and showcase the institution’s extensive collections, as well as classrooms and office space for 100 staff.
Adjaye, who was a visiting professor at Princeton from 2008 to 2010, intends the museum to be a place of mind-opening encounter, with art and ideas studied “in the service of humanity.”
Defining a powerful center of cultural gravity at the heart of one of the greatest universities in the world, the new Princeton University Art Museum building will engage with its campus and vibrant communities through a new synthesis of art, learning, and social opportunities. The reimagined museum will be the cultural gateway between Princeton University, its students, faculty, and the world, a place of mind-opening encounter with art and ideas ‘in the service of humanity.
- Sir David Adjaye, Founding Principal, Adjaye Associates
New York-based Cooper Robertson will bring extensive experience in their role as executive architect, with recent projects including the Whitney Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art.
News of the proposal comes shortly after Princeton celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Steven Holl-designed Lewis Art Complex with a documentary video in collaboration with Spirit of Space.
Having founded Adjaye Associates in 2000, Sir David Adjaye has overseen notable projects such as the $540 million Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, which opened in 2016. Ongoing schemes include the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and the National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Center in London.
His recent accolades include the 2018 Louis Kahn Memorial Award and 2018 WUSTL International Humanities Prize.
News via: Princeton University
