Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye has completed the public spaces for members at the new New York headquarters of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the largest healthcare union in the United States. Anton Refregier’s mural, which adorned the original SEIU building, is commemorated with a replica in the entrance lobby. It depicts important moments depicting milestones in the SEIU’s struggle for labour rights, inspiring the subsequent rooms in the building.
The original work was mounted on a cinder block wall and its fragility and scale made it impossible to move, so Adjaye commissioned a replica. The reproduction of the mural opened Adjaye to the idea of transferring the rich history of the union to the new headquarters using a similar monumental form.
Thus, Adjaye decided to turn the union’s historic photographs into large-scale, mural-scale, floor-to-ceiling works of art. It was the tile factory Cerámica Suro in Guadalajara, Mexico, which has often worked with renowned artists, that was commissioned to reproduce these 80 photos on tiles at the desired scale, digitalising the images and transferring them to the two-inch square tile glaze.
