New Smithsonian Selects Freelon
14 04 2009The speculation is over, the Smithsonian has announced that the winning design for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture is the Freelon Adjaye Bond team’s angular design (shown below). There was some stiff competition and though this design wasn’t the most ambitious of the proposals it certainly has some interesting elements like a color changing exterior and a killer lobby ceiling.
It is also significant and perhaps a little surprising to note that this will be the first Smithsonian building to shoot for LEED status. The interior main lobby with its distinctive hanging ceiling after the jump…
Yeah we have to say that is one cool looking ceiling! What do you think?
[Credit: Credit: Freelon Adjaye Bond]
I always liked this one the best, and I concur on that ceiling…
A-M-A-Z-I-N-G
Simple and ELEGANT!
Freelon is just the architect of record for the museum. The lead designer is David Adjaye.
I went to school with Phil Freelon’s kids. There couldn’t be a more deserving guy. And maybe you get his wife, Nnenna, a Grammy-nominated jazz singer to work the opening…
True that the lead designer is Adjaye, but without Freelon it would have been a big old mushy pile of craziness! More than it already is!
The ceiling makes the lobby look like a Las Veagas casino, and not in a good way.
I wouldn’t want to be the one to have to clean that ceiling every decade or so with compressed air and a facemask… nasty. Prediction - that ceiling does not get built.
No, I don’t care much for it - I preferred Foster’s design. But it gets points for being more interesting to look at than the standard Mall museum-in-a-box.
Is it too soon to dynamite the American Indian Museum? What a disaster…
I agree. It’s unlikely that the federal government will allow all of the rendered intricacies of this building to be built. Aside from the Castle itself, the East Wing of the National Museum of Art and the Museum of the American Indian are arguably the furthest removed from the neo-classical collection. Even they are rather muted.
Fosters’ design would have been a much more tasteful update on the Smithsonian’s present collection of buildings on the mall. Moreover, its build-out would have remained closer to the renderings.
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