Dream team
Mark Schultz, Staff Writer
It is a project so big that four firms have joined to make it happen.
On Tuesday, the Smithsonian announced its National Museum of African American History and Culture would be designed by The Freelon Group, Adjaye Associates, Davis Brody Bond and SmithGroup.
It's an honor for design guarantor Freelon and by extension the Bull City. Durham boasts examples of the hometown architect's work from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park to the stunning, new Durham Station transit center.
Among the other firms, lead designer David Adjaye is best known for the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.
The Tanzania-born Adjaye has incorporated African influences in his work, honoring the public life of tribal villages we have largely lost in the West.
"The markets, the way people use the spaces in front of their homes, the way life is lived as networks," he said in a 2007 interview with New York magazine.
"There has been a tendency to shy away from who you are, and I don't want to deny who I am," Adjaye said. "If a Japanese architect talks about Shintoism, everyone goes, "Wow." If an African architect talks about an African village, it is somehow weird in the Western context."
No shying away any longer
The Durham News | Dream team