Putting buildings in their place.

David Adjaye, the Tanzanian-born (1966) London-based architect, has produced some notable houses and apartments; his practice has flowered recently with a series of public building projects. Ten of them, ranging from an upgrade of the Nobel Peace Center, a pavilion at the Venice Biennale, an arts centre in Denver and a brace of libraries in London, are the subject of a good exhibition in what was founded as the Whitechapel Art Gallery, has generally been known as the Whitechapel Gallery, but now refers to itself simply as Whitechapel, there by appropriating in an arts-colonialist sort of way the entire area in which it is located. Too trendy by half.

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That description was one which might have been applied to Adjaye himself not so long ago, when he was described by a staff enthusiast as 'not an architect--a brand'. Perhaps it was more tongue-in-cheek than it sounded, but it didn't do the Adjaye much good because it placed him in that dreaded category: the fashionable architect. Happily the work on show proves (a) that his career will not be limited to designing dwellings for artists and the mediocracy; and (b) that he can produce thoughtful responses not merely to the formal programme of a project, but to its mainly urban context. He will, however, have to enjoy for put up with) the surrounding baggage that is being hung on him as a young, gifted and black architect who works in London's East End. Whatever he does in the public arena, it is not enough for it to be (merely) good architecture. On 11 March an associated exhibition event takes place, called: 'Multicultural architecture--How can architects respond to our multicultural cities?' What is this supposed to mean? More security?

The excellent accompanying exhibition catalogue/book (David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings, Thames and Hudson, [pounds sterling]29.95) has as its sub-title 'Specificity; Customization; Imbrication', which is banal description dressed up in theoretical language. Aren't all public buildings specific? Aren't they all customised? Aren't they all 'imbricated'--overlapping to you and me. The critical essays in the book provide more overload, in which design decisions are accorded the status of philosophical discovery only one suspects, because of who the architect is. Change the practice name on the title block (middle-aged white commercial firm) and the applause would probably fade.

However, one can certainly recommend a visit to the exhibition, a read of the book and a visit to some of the content, which is only a few minutes' walk away from the gallery The Ideas Store, for example, is on Whitechapel Road, and is given an appropriately good showing in the exhibition since it is the most important and complex work Adjaye has yet completed. For once, the hip name is appropriate, since although much of the building is a library, that is by no means the only function, and to call it a library would have been a misnomer. The local authority client wanted a multi-use building and the architect has responded with verve, incorporating a semi enclosed-escalator which works on the street and with the building.

My cavil about overloading the work with symbolic significance because of its inevitable relationship to space is illustrated by the fact that this building follows a simpler version in Chrisp Street, rather further away. That project explored volume, light, cladding and colour, and is a very clear prototype for the more complex later building. Both are on the street, and both have an automatic relationship to their surroundings; some of the moves in respect of entrance arc obvious; some less so. In neither case can the building be said to be a public space project as such, but in both the surrounding urban context and grain have been considered. That makes for competent architecture.

What comes across in the exhibition, and is elaborated in the book, is the range of inspirations which inform the work--in particular objects and fabrics from various parts of Africa which sometimes act as metaphors for the resulting buildings. The one-line descriptions of the relevance of these inspirations are excellent: a Ghanaian textile is 'parallel bars occupied on a rhythmic basis'; a comb is 'a disc, a square and a screen within an everyday object'; on a Sierra Leone mask, 'a repeated unit changes size to match the geometry of the surface'. We also get the palette of materials (and colours), and a refreshingly large number of hand-drawn diagrams/analysis sketches which precede the very clear plans and sections. These suggest an architect working in the round, sometimes focusing on the object and sometimes more on context, neither in an obviously formulaic way.

So: an architect with a wider range of references than many contemporaries, who did his apprenticeships with Souto de Moura and Chipperfield after time at the Royal College of Art, and who has plenty to offer on the strength of this show including his first US building to be completed soon. His strengths appear to be an intuitive, artistic sensibility in respect of atmosphere, materials and colour, allied to conventional architectural skills. His RCA dissertation, incidentally, concerned 'Sacred place and the tea ceremony in Japan'. Perhaps that's what multi-culluralism really means: being interested in, and understanding, more than your own back yard.

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