Bill O'Leary - WASHINGTON POST
Phil Freelon, at the National Building Museum, is the architect of record for the Museum for African American History and Culture.
This morning, Durham-based architect Phil Freelon will watch a symbolic shovel break ground on a 5-acre site for a new museum adjacent to the Washington Monument.
It was the second time in six months that the earth there has moved.
August's 5.8-magnitude quake rattled the historic obelisk all the way up to its aluminum-tipped capstone. That capstone had already inspired a key design element for the Smithsonian's soon-to-be-built Museum for African American History and Culture across 15th Street.
The museum's design is the result of a collaboration among Freelon and two other architects: David Adjaye and the late Max Bond. They came together in 2008 as Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup to compete for the design.
Each architect in their group was highly regarded. Each happened also to be black: Freelon and Bond were African-Americans, and Adjaye was born in Tanzania and raised in London from age 14 by his Ghanaian parents, both diplomats.
Freelon, now the museum's architect of record, specializes in designing spaces that weave together the nation's history, fabric and culture. His work is, by choice, almost exclusively in the public sphere.
"It's experienced by everyday people," Freelon, 58, said. "I enjoy providing design excellence for people to encounter, in places like libraries and bus stations."
The groundbreaking, timed to coincide with Washington's birthday, looked to the nation's past as well as its future, underscoring the challenge of interpreting the complex and often appalling narrative arc of the black experience in America - a history of persecution and struggle, to be sure, but one of resiliency and triumph, too.
"The African-American story is the quintessential American story, even though it was about a forced migration," Freelon said. "America is about opportunity for people from other places. You'll find the best and worst of what the American story is in the African-American story."
Freelon, a graduate of N.C. State's College of Design with a master's degree in architecture from MIT, has lived in Durham since 1982. His wife, Nnenna, is a six-time Grammy-nominated jazz singer. President Barack Obama recently named him to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
Bond, long regarded as the dean of African-American architects and one of the nation's most influential architectural educators, met Freelon met in 1989 at Harvard University, when Freelon was on a fellowship. By 2005, they'd agreed to join forces to compete for the museum's initial planning phase.
A collaboration
Shortly after that win, they got a call from the 45-year-old Adjaye, known for his international, award-winning designs for the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, the Moscow School of Business and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. The three decided to collaborate on the competition's design phase.
Adjaye would become the museum's lead designer.
Soon, the collaboration by Freelon Adjaye Bond will be tangible, in a 374,000-square-foot, $500 million museum, which is scheduled to open in 2015. Within the next three years, a new monument - sheathed in bronze-colored panels rather than granite, marble or limestone - will start to glow on the Mall.
With African influence
It's a different kind of design for a space known largely for its neoclassical landscape. This museum eschews the influence of Western civilization, instead choosing to focus on West Africa and the rich culture of the ancient Yoruba tribe there. They're a people known for their exquisite bronze and metal sculptural art -- and for their role in the African diaspora in the Americas.
The seven-story building is designed to be an uplifting experience. Its first and largest gallery will lie underground, but rise 60 feet. There, visitors will view a vintage Pullman car and a restored Stearman PT-13D aircraft used to train Tuskegee Airmen from 1944 to 1946. Escalators and stairs will lead to galleries above, each articulating the stories of African-American contributions to music, sports and civil rights, among other topics.
Within the galleries will be a number of framed, uninterrupted vistas of surrounding monuments - to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln - viewed through the lens of African-American history and culture.
The museum's primary signature will be its silhouette of a bronze corona. In a form reminiscent of an inverted ziggurat, the corona is akin to a huge capital at the top of a Yoruban column - tiered and cantilevered out as it rises.
It is freighted with meanings.
"It's like the inverted, triple-headed crown used by the Yoruban court," Adjaye said.
"It's a crown that signifies the status of the person wearing it," Freelon said. "It's part of the celebratory nature of the building - an architectural form that's uplifting and dignified."
But most symbolic is the angle of this corona. It slants skyward at 17 degrees - almost precisely the cant of the capstone atop its neighbor, the Washington Monument.
