David Adjaye’s Firm Finds Itself Deep in Debt

While times have been tough for starchitects lately, from Richard Rogers‘ projects disappearing to Zaha Hadid‘s and Norman Foster‘s mass layoffs, it sounds as though rising star David Adjaye has it the worst. Despite his recent conquests including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, landing two libraries in Washington DC, and everyone still going gah-gah over his Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Building Design reports that his nine year old company is deeply in the red. Following a number of canceled jobs, Adjaye now owes at least a million pounds to creditors, forcing him to lay off staffers and seek council on getting the company back in the black. What’s more, the starchitect even put £400,000 of his own money to keep things semi-stable. Yet while the company is suffering, Adjaye seems confident that closing its doors isn’t a concern: “We have enough work on our books and we’re repaying our [Company Voluntary Arrangement] very well so we’re in a good place.” Elsewhere in Building Design, Amanda Baillieu says that the issue isn’t so much with Adjaye’s finances, it’s working with public building projects and having his central office located in the UK that are the larger problems.

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