To be sure, the brilliant British-Ghanian architect David Adjaye was not an obvious choice as Design Miami’s Designer of the Year. Unlike most of his predecessors, he has designed very few pieces of furniture or objects, except as part of a total architectural environment. And although he has designed for both artists and collectors (among them artists Lorna Simpson and James Casebere, painter Chris Ofili, director Spike Lee and collector Adam Lindeman and his gallerist/wife Amalia Dayan), his work is not in itself the object of collecting desire.

He has designed the acclaimed Denver Museum of Contemporary Art and has one of this country’s most important museum commissions, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American Culture and History (NMAACH) which will sit on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. His work shapes galleries, but it’s not — for the most part —on display in them.

“What’s very interesting about David is his way of collaboration,” says Design Miami’s new director Marianne Goebl. “For him, collaboration is a way of expression.”

The Designer of the Year selection is always accompanied by a commission. To this end, Adjaye has designed a pavilion titled Genesis that stands as the entrance to the Design Miami tent just across the parking lots to the west of the Miami Beach Convention Center and the main Art Basel Miami Beach exhibitions. It is a timber-frame prismatic equilateral triangle that deals with such heady concepts as “enclosure, aperture, views, respite, meditation and community” but also offers (more mundanely but no less necessarily) places to sit and escape the sun, rain or crowds.

Born in Tanzania to a Ghanian diplomatic family, Adjaye was educated in England. He has been awarded the Order of the British Empire, and he is young (just 44) for such a distinction. His principal practice is based in London, but he also has offices in Berlin and New York. He has just published a multi-volume work, African Metropolitan Architecture, with the international art and architecture publisher Rizzoli; it is a major work, the result of 10 years of travel to 53 African countries. Among his other important commissions are the Moscow School of Management and the Nobel Peace Center.

“He was a less obvious choice,” says developer and collector Craig Robins, Design Miami principal, “and yet it was a phenomenal and important selection. He has such a profound sense of design and profound sense of community.” Robins has purchased Adjaye’s Genesis, with the idea of re-installing it at some later point in the Miami Design District.

Adjaye is also reflective, thoughtful and most eloquent. We spoke with him about his life, work and ideas. Q. First and foremost, you are an architect, but your work encompasses so much more than that. How would you describe what you do?

I would say that I work in a creative industry — not just architecture — that is diverse, with many voices and different references coming into the canon. I’m driven by the work, but I’m also driven by my need for the work to have something more, to be something more. It is a transitional occupation.Q. Could you tell us about the pavilion you are making for Design Miami? What was the inspiration? What are the ideas behind it?