 Madam President, ladies, gentlemen, and colleagues, it is a great honor to present the citation for Sir David Adjaye, a leading architect of his generation. Sir David has been rightly described as a visionary of our time. He received an OBE in 2007, topped the 2013 power list of Britain's most influential black people. And in 2016, he was awarded both the coveted Panerai London Design Medal and the MIT McDermott Award in the arts. Sir David is the only architect named among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2017. And he was knighted earlier this year for his outstanding services to British architecture. Architecture at its worst can subjugate and bring down people, told Sir David Adjaye to British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare in a recent radio interview. But at its best, architecture can elevate and emancipate. He has devoted his energy and talents to projects that grapple with deep social and cultural issues and to the pursuit of humanity in architecture. David Adjaye was born in Dar es Salaam in 1966 to Ghanaian parents. His father's role as a diplomat took the family to numerous countries in East Africa and the Middle East before settling permanently in the UK when David was 13 years old. Those early experiences of travel and encounter with diverse cultures, as well as his exposure to racial discourse and relations in the UK were formative to the cosmopolitan civic-minded and democratic vision that he would cultivate in his architectural practice. David enrolled on a foundation course in art at Middlesex University, marking the start of his fertile collaborations with artists. Art taught me how to look, he said. Artists give things form, happening in the world. I wanted to do that in architecture. He went on to complete a BA in architecture at London South Bank Polytechnic and graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 1993, receiving an RIBA President's Medal Student Award. That prestigious prize heralded his many professional accomplishments and accolades to come. In 1994, David founded a practice in partnership with William Russell in North London. And six years later, he established his own practice. Private commissions like the House and Studio for Artist Chris O'Feeley and the so-called Dirty House for Two Artists in Hackney earned him a reputation for pushing boundaries and for igniting dynamic dialogue between the history of place and the social concerns of our present age. In his own words, the political angle of architecture is to continually unshackle the present from the past, to make an alternative more democratic city. In 2006, the White Chapel Gallery hosted David Ajay's first solo exhibition, which was accompanied by the architect's first book on houses. That period also witnessed a shift in David's practice to making public buildings. In his most recent book, he writes that his claim is to democratize place through architecture by displacing the codes that might privilege certain spaces and that express exclusion and separation. Among his esteemed early public projects is the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, the main spaces of which, in his words, are intended to connect with people's fundamental experiences of war and peace, regardless of their origins or culture. Other significant projects at this critical stage in his career include the idea store in White Chapel, shortlisted in 2006 for the Sterling Prize, the Stephen Lawrence Center in Lewisham, Rithington Place, which promotes debate on diversity in the arts, and the Bernie Grant Arts Center in Tottenham. David's portfolio of public projects has continued to grow exponentially, and along with that has come teaching affiliations to top UK and American academic institutions. With offices now in London, New York, and Accra, he and his team have secured prestigious commissions around the globe, each responding to and interrogating the conditions of their particular context. These range from Sugar Hill in Harlem, New York, which courageously attempts to reinvent the social housing model, and the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at Harvard. Works in progress include a Museum of Slavery in Cape Coast, Ghana, and the first state-of-the-art Children's Cancer Hospital on the African continent. Sir David's most celebrated accomplishment to date is the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. It was opened in 2016, September, by President Obama. Prominently located on the National Mall, the Sacred Heart of America, this sculptural bronze-clad museum not only narrates the contribution of African Americans to the making of the country, but its form, program, and aesthetic expression embodied the story of black modernity. That story, claims Sir David, starts in Africa. Africa, for David, is an incredibly rich resource that he keeps going back to for inspiration. Over a period of 11 years, he made multiple journeys there, visiting and visually recording the continent's diverse towns and cities. This offered opportunity for David to contemplate the mutations of modern architecture and hybridizations in response to conditions on the ground, including geography and climate. In his own work, David freely integrates hybrid elements that make his buildings more accessible to a wider public. This is exemplified by the crown-like superstructure of the National Museum in Washington, which draws its inspiration from Yoruba sculpture. And by the bronzed latticework that she's the building, recalling the ornamental ironwork of New Orleans and Charleston, wrought by African American craftsmen. He published his Reflections and Findings on African Urbanity in a seven-volume set, Adjaye Africa Architecture. David hopes it will serve as a reference source for developing appropriate planning and building strategies for Africa's rapidly growing cities. He embarked on the study, he writes, because I felt that Africa was often seen as an exotic place that had become disconnected from the rest of the world, a troubled continent that had little to offer. Having been brought up there, I saw it rather differently as a place where every possible variant had been produced and every relationship had been contested. His deep respect for Africa and his recognition of its vast potential resonates powerfully with so as scholarship. So, too, do Sir David's broader investigations of such issues as diaspora, social division, history, democracy, context, and place-making. In this brief citation, I hope to have communicated the strong alignment that exists between Sir David Adjaye's work and passions and so as his mission as an institution of teaching and research excellence. On behalf of the school, I thank Sir David for attending today's graduation ceremony. The so as community looks forward to a future of close collaboration with you. In the search for democratic solutions and sustainable strategies to the world's political, social, economic, and environmental challenges, which are great today. Madam President, it is my privilege now to present Sir David Adjaye for the award of fellowship of the school and to invite him to address this assembly. Thank you, graduates. I didn't prepare a long speech because I don't think you need that. It's quite the momentous day, but I must say that whenever I hear those narrations, I wonder who the person is because it's not very long since I sort of had this Sir title put on my name, so I'm getting used to it. But being here today, I remember the time when I was in the crowd, eagerly anxious to shake the president's hand and to acknowledge my family, acknowledge my family that had made it, had graduated. The world was not a great place then. We were in a huge recession. I won't reveal the time. You've heard my birthday already. But in a way, the world is always in turmoil and we're in a very strange world now that you come into. When I started, the most important things were the things that I learned from the institutions that I loved, my friends, and the incredible relationships that I made with my colleagues. And as I chartered a course in the world, sometimes not sure exactly why I was doing what I was doing, but being emboldened by the conviction and the connections that I'd made and the ability to have continual dialogue, reciprocal relationships with colleagues who tutored me, helped me, and friends who I grew up with who formed my intellectual core, formed the soup in which I continued to thrive to this day and I'm thankful for. I just want to encourage you that this, you know it's a special time, but it's really an incredible time. The bonds that you're making now will probably last your lifetimes and those bonds will guide you and be there when the world is troubled. And when you are in trouble, because they will be trouble, I had many, you know, the story edits out, nearly going bankrupt, having trouble with clients, nearly being sued, nearly being taken to jail for, you know, trying to push things. Those are the things that don't get mentioned, but it's a bumpy road, but I just urge you to, you know, use the moral compass that you are forging now. That should be your North Star. I'm truly honored to receive this honor with you today and truly happy to be graduating with you, as it were. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.