David Adjaye's Washington Skeleton Chair in Manual

Manual is a biannual journal about art and its making, produced by the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum in Providence, Rhode Island. Its Fall 2016 edition included the Washington Skeleton Aluminum Side Chair Chair by David Adjaye in an issue of art and design related to the theme of alchemy. The chair is a recent addition to the permanent collection of the RISD Museum, which encompasses European and American furniture, silver, metalwork, wallpaper, ceramics, glass, and plastics from the medieval period to the present.

"To be an artist or an alchemist is to have an intimate relationship with language and materials as tools for transformation," the editors write in the introduction to Manual. "To connect through history, generating a culture-material vessel that travels through time-space."

Designed by British-Ghanaian architect David Adjaye in 2013, the Washington Skeleton Chair, part of the Washington Collection, represents a meditation on structure, material, and balance. "It is an amazing luxury to be able to manipulate and sculpt – at full scale – as you go along," he told Knoll. "This is something you can’t do with buildings."

In September 2016, the much-awaited National Museum for African American History and Culture opened in Washington DC. Adjaye's design for the museum, with its gold lattice facade, crystallizes his ongoing explorations of permanence and history through modern design.