David Adjaye’s Genesis gives Design Miami an architectural threshold

David Adjaye’s Genesis pavilion has given Design Miami a distinctive architectural introduction this year. The commission accompanied his selection as Designer of the Year and turned the approach to the fair into an encounter with space, structure and furniture-like elements.

A pavilion has a different job from the objects inside a collectible design fair. Visitors move through it and around it, testing its scale through their own bodies. Genesis brings that experience to the foreground, using an architectural installation to frame the transition from the city to the exhibition.

The choice of Adjaye also widens the conversation beyond individual chairs, lamps or cabinets. Buildings and temporary structures belong to the same broader question of how design organizes daily life. At a fair where objects are often considered one by one, the pavilion asks visitors to begin with the experience of an environment.