Washington, D.C.: “I Have A Dream” as an Architect

If I am correct, there are only two weeks of Presidential Leadership Academy blog posts left before the end of the 2015-2016 scholastic year! My, how time flies! I decided to drive past Greensboro (North Carolina) – not because it was not a significant stop on the journey! but – because I would like to touch on a turn-of-events that was continuously present throughout Spring Break. However, before I reach this subject, let us finish the Civil Rights Tour with the last stop: Washington, D.C.

Although the Presidential Leadership Academy spent two days in the nation’s capitol, I would like to focus on the first twenty-four hours for two reasons. The first is the unforgettable experience on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial . . . Dean Brady held a pair of speakers as our group listened to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the spot in which he gave his speech on August 28th, 1963. The national emblem of the United States, the bald eagle, flew over our heads before we proceeded to sing the National Anthem.

The mention of nationality brings me to the second reason in which the first of the two days in Washington, D.C. was most important to me. The introduction of the National Museum of African American History and Culture by a representative at the National Museum of American History ignited a fire within me to return to the same spot in the Fall of 2016 to visit the then-newly opened museum. As a prospective architect, I immediately desired to learn more of the building standing before me – and, thanks to the internet – I learned directly from the mouth of David Adjaye: New York City-/London-based architect of the museum.

More accurately, from a Q&A between Joseph Stromberg of the Smithsonian Magazine and David Adjaye. Adjaye began the conversation by starting within the building. He explained that “Essentially, the way it is being designed is to be organized into significant sections. There’s history and culture, which is really the primary hub . . . Then there’s what I call the life of the citizen . . . the emergence of the black middle class within the country, and that important role in organizing many aspects of American culture that we take for granted. And then the final part is the entertainment and the arts. So the third tier is really looking at . . . what African-American music, translated through the American identity has done to the world, and the significance of that trajectory”.

The tour guide at the National Museum of American History showed us a temporary exhibit on the newest addition to the National Mall. He made sure to make note of the building’s form. As Adjaye describes it, “It’s a ziggurat that moves upward into the sky . . . When you see the building, the opaque parts look like they’re being levitated above this light space, so you get the sense of an upward mobility in the building. And when you look at the way the circulation works, everything lifts you up into the light”. The tour guide had made sense of the building’s form; however, he did not mention the term “primary spirit”. Apparently, Adjaye envisions that behind the museum plan as one of “praise”.

This “praise” is demonstrated with the bronze mesh enveloping the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s exterior. In Adjaye’s words, “Essentially, we are looking towards the guild tradition of the South . . . There were very skilled African-American casters – a lot of the early architecture of Louisiana and the South was built by black people. So what we wanted to do was somehow acknowledge that important beginning of transition from the agrarian to the professional class, and to reference this powerful casting tradition”.