The new museum will be part of the Smithsonian Institution and will be located on the last large vacant lot (2 hectares) on Mall Boulevard, where the most important cultural institutions and monuments of the US capital are located.
Since the building will be inscribed in the existing ensemble, the main task for all participants in the competition was to combine the bright, memorable appearance of the building with its restraint, which does not violate the overall picture.
At the same time, the leitmotif of the Test Project was the reflection in the building of all the diversity of the "African American experience". To achieve this goal more successfully, all architects were required to find an African American partner to work together on the project. It was also necessary to convey “joy, spirituality and optimism” along with the “dark pages” of this experience. Among the more formal requirements were the environmental cleanliness and energy activity of the project and attention to the museum's nightlife.
Next to the future building (due to open in 2015) there is the Museum of American History and the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial is clearly visible. Most of the finalists' projects envisage rooms with panoramic glazing or a kind of viewing platforms that “include” these landmark buildings for the United States into the museum space.
Moshe Safdie proposed to build a four-story building with glazed facades. The main entrance is marked by a volume depicting a wreck of a ship, a reminder of the shipment of black slaves across the ocean to America from Africa.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro sees the future museum as a glazed volume of complex curvilinear shape with a hall for jazz concerts and an open amphitheater.
The Pei Cobb Freed bureaus inscribed the rounded volume of the building in a rectangular, seven-story shell block with a roof garden.
David Adjaye and Freelon Group's project resembles a “stack of baskets”; the facades are sheathed with copper sheets.
Norman Foster has placed most of the circular museum building underground: visitors will descend there on a ramp.
The building of Antoine the Predok emerges from the surface of the earth as an extension of a landscape of stones and soil; ornamental motives of Yoruba art are applied to its glass roof.
The jury will determine the winner of the competition next month.
