Bank of America has awarded a $1 million grant towards the development of the National Juneteenth Museum, designed by BIG. The money will contribute to the project’s estimated $70 million price tag. Located in Fort Worth’s Historic Southside neighborhood, the museum will serve as an epicenter for awareness and preservation of Juneteenth’s history. It also aims to revitalize the surrounding area by acting as an economic catalyst.
The 50,000-square-foot museum takes on a handcrafted design, utilizing materials such as heavy timber. It also draws on the local architecture of gabled rooftops. The structure’s undulating roof results in a series of peaks and valleys that combine to form a star-shaped courtyard in the middle of the museum. In addition, the building will feature 10,000 square feet of exhibit galleries, a 250-seat theater to host lectures, a speaker series, performances, and more, a black box, a business incubator for local entrepreneurs, and a food hall featuring local vendors.
"The predominantly African American neighborhood surrounding the museum has helped shape Fort Worth for generations," said the National Juneteenth Museum's CEO, Jarred Joward. "I'm encouraged to see Bank of America helping breathe life into the Historic Southside through intentional investment in cultural education and preservation. Residents, visitors and local businesses will be able to witness the impact of Bank of America's gift, supporting a space where generational wealth, health and tradition will have a collaborative space to flourish."
The museum’s founding board member, Opal Lee, also known as the grandmother of Juneteenth, spearheaded the recognition of the day as a national holiday after she trekked 1,400 miles, at the age of 89, from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. to petition for the cause in 2016. The National Juneteenth Museum is expected to open to the public on June 19, 2025.
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Why BIG? (And why not a local/Black architect?) Does the decision reflect the status and popularity BIG has achieved among the powers that be? Will its being BIG, in fact, help it achieve recognition and success?
The project is ambitious, but—I hope I'm wrong—maybe overly so and looks ill conceived. Build a big top, open it up, and the people will come. The design itself, minimal, self-effacing, does nothing for the neighborhood, which it dominates and overpowers, which could use an esthetic lift, or for its past.
The neighborhood needed a design that reminded it that it is a community, a neighborhood. This one does the opposite.
I supposed BIG is geared up to build the project on the fly, maybe at a cost saving? They've built so many similar.
It also draws on the local architecture of gabled rooftops.
They won't have to waste time or money visiting the site.
The BIG phenomenon just baffles me and I suspect says something about where we are in architecture now.
Why does it feel so gross that BIG is doing a Juneteenth project? I'd feel cynical right now, but the cynicism bar is set many levels below this.
When considering the centuries-long struggle for freedom and civil rights faced by Blacks, my first thought is Scandinavians.
BIG is led by a man-child, with a colonizer heritage and has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault. They should not be given any project until said man-child is removed.
the story is that bjarke is not doing it himself, I suppose?
The partner in charge of the project is Douglass Alligood.
Maybe there is an argument to be made that the office in charge of this project should be all African American only (though the local office KAI, is minority owned). Opal Lee, the woman credited with pushing and inspiring everyone to make Juneteenth into a holiday, has a lot to say about it, here (NYT), and here (ATTRACTIONS). She doesn't seem to be upset about the architecture at all, quite the opposite.
To quote her comments in the NYT,
“The plans are beautiful. It’s off the chain,” and “Juneteenth means freedom to me. We want people to understand the past, we don’t want it watered down.”
If Opal Lee is cool with this project, and thinks the architecture is meaningful and a good fit, then the critique against Bjarke needs to stand up to her standards at the very least, no?
Personally I feel the landscape and urban/community connection is not very nice, but I tend to feel that about most projects in North America, so that is just my bias. I know BIG has done very good urban plans and guess it just couldn't happen here, for any number of reasons. The formal architecture is on first blush a bit simplistic, but when I looked into the reasoning the shape has meaning that is important - and decided I was just being too architect-y.
TLDR, Opal lee's comments and vibe are pretty infectious. I think the only way to come to a conclusion about this project is to go visit it when it is completed. Which is the main idea of the whole thing anyway. ie, that we visit it and learn things. The architecture is just a by-product of that ambition...
Will, not for nothing, but if Dream The Combine were the architects, I don't doubt Opal would've been equally blown away, and even more proud than could be captured by the article in the NYT.
yes that is entirely possible. They are great. I can imagine some of the issues about context would have been better solved with their approach than the BIG way. I guess the client wanted a larger office with more experience? Hard to say without being privy to the selection process. In any case, Douglass Alligood has a history and a presence that is not nothing, and I dont think his work is diluted by being Partner inside of BIG instead of on his own...
Will, I don't disagree. Optics. I'm not even suggesting that DTC would've even taken the job.
There doesn’t seem to be much in their portfolio that would suggest they would be capable of such a project. BIG has a large portfolio of cultural/museum work on the other hand. I think BIG suffers from an issue of having such a prominent face.
To the point above, the person who lead the project fits well within the expectations you might place on who would be hired for it. But all anyone can think of with BIG is Bjarke. Maybe that’s an us problem, not a them problem? The company is actually quite large at this point.
No comment on the design itself.
yup. its an us problem, in my opinion. BIG has 700 people in it. Not privy to how BIG divides the office, but many larger offices are run on the pattern where partners run mini office within the big one. IF that is where BIG is going it is probably time to let other faces shine more. Perhaps this is the beginning of that...
I made a quick virtual tour of the Southside Neighborhood in Fort Worth. It is flat and spread out, and the buildings are low lying. It has a great many churches and many other buildings of historic distinction, on the registry. Many homes, while modest, have character.
And, yes, it needs an economic boost. I'm skeptical that will come from a large museum complex. (How?) Rather, it may need to come from coordinated small efforts spread across the neighborhood. There is a multitude of church basements for these, along with other small buildings, the NAACP offices, former lodges, others.
The BIG complex overshadows the churches on the left (above) and completely ignores the area's scale and layout. If successful, it will only lead to congestion. It is aware only of itself, and indifferent to the area surrounding.
Why put the black box, the business incubator, there? The museum, if crowded, will be distracting. Why sell food there when local vendors could set up shop nearby and the existing restaurants get a boost? The project feels like a unsubstantial dream, wholly abstract, ungrounded: build big—and BIG—and magic will happen.
And if it doesn't succeed—
The project at best is an uncertain gamble. Most, it is an opportunity missed, an example that might have been set for the rest of us. We need architecture that reflects our identities, our place, our past—especially in this case a past that has tested and defined our character over centuries. And the present, our possible futures. BIG shows no recognition, does none of these, in fact is designed as if they don't matter or don't exist. It doesn't even represent the type of a museum. This is mindless, soulless architecture, and we're seeing a lot of it now.
You've hit on the problem even if you didn't flat out state the problem. This is why architects, and their deliberate naivete are loathed in many parts of the country. Bringing "investment" will most certainly expel many, if not most of the community. The gentrifying nature of this type is never considered by the architect.
I heard this on a podcast the other day; Investment comes at the expense of communities, simply because the investor is looking to invest a minimal amount, in order to extract the largest amount of profit. FUUUUUUUCK.
This project will be for the bourgeois black political class, this has nothing to do with helping the community. The jobs will be minimal, and the construction will largely be done by non black firm, that has no connection to the community.
And we think architects don't know this?
A lot of middle class neighborhoods suffer from social and cultural blight. And they lack the character and history of Southside. Again, an opportunity was missed. An example could have been set here for the rest of us.
More and more, we need to think locally.
The site response is indeed not good. My guess is that is not about BIG but some other circumstances. BIG has extremely good urban and landscape architects and they are not being used here at all. Part of the reason BIG got a lot of their better recent works is because of the office's shift towards an urban led design model. This project seems to be going back to their earlier days when form was the main point. It's a curious shift.
Maybe it gets sorted in the execution...
Ingels told Dezeen he "absolutely" did not expect to become so well-known in the course of his architecture career and indicated that being in the public eye does not particularly appeal to him.
"I was speaking to the directors and writers of the Game of Thrones show and talking about why George RR Martin is not finishing the books, and they said it's the problem of celebrity," he said.
https://www.dezeen.com/2023/07/12/bjarke-ingels-uia-congress-interview/#
I wonder if Bjarke is caught in a trap of a sort we're seeing elsewhere in the culture, in society. He has to attract attention to get the projects. But the more he works for this attention, the more he has to build crowd pleasing projects, certainly today, where mass popularity rules, where the standards are not high, where he has to keep work simple and showy. It's a vicious circle.
Interesting but can't help but conclude that with 700 people in the office that fame of the founder is not the problem for this project (or any of the office's work)
The site is not easy and intensification of land use is something the American planning system is not naturally built for, especially in under-served parts of the country.
Usually when BIG is able to carry out the best urban plans it is where all the money and resources are and there is a lot to work with contextually. This is a modest site with a large project on it and the fit is somewhat uneasy. A common problem in some parts of the world, but not something western architects get a lot of chances to develop ideas for. Sejima or Fujimoto maybe could have dealt with it more easily, just philosophically...(again this is just my bias)
And maybe it was simply not a priority for anyone, or a trade-off needed to happen and this is the outcome. My honest guess is the latter.
The museum has a site, with pix and explanation:
https://nationaljuneteenthmuseum.org/
These are remarkably bad.
With all deference to the good people of Southside and none whatsoever to the Dallas Cowboys—
We've seen this before, BIG's student center at Johns Hopkins
https://archinect.com/news/article/150282669/another-tod-williams-billie-tsien-building-is-being-demolished-to-make-way-for-a-big-project-in-baltimore
or the Albright Knox Gallery additions. And elsewhere. It's a trend. The goal seems to bring as many people together as possible, any way that might be managed, without coherent plan or reason, likely at the expense of mission.
And perhaps such a project will bring recognition and attract others and spur economic growth:
The Louvre Abu Dhabi and the surrounding Saadiyat Cultural District (set to be a smorgasbord of starchitecture) exemplify the new generation of cultural megaprojects with some clarity. Again, there are familiar parts to the story. For example, Jean Nouvel’s design for the Louvre (AR April 2019) quickly became an icon for the emirate. The building’s intricately engineered domed roof appears frequently in tourist and real estate advertising, drawing investment to an area that had previously ‘not [been] inhabited except for by small fishing communities’, as Maryam Mudhaffar wrote in this magazine. While the Bilbao effect was ‘realised to regenerate crumbling or disinvested areas’, Gogishvili explains, ‘it’s happening in a reverse mode in Abu Dhabi’. The land value of what was previously an uninhabited area has been increasing, Gogishvili explains, thanks to the economic mechanism of a museum such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
"Follow the Money," George Kafka, AR:
https://www.architectural-revi...
Maybe at the expense of the community. At any rate, I'm tremendously skeptical that could happen here, and the design is no winner. The whole project feels like it's built on sand. Institutions will likely come into play, joining BOA, bringing their baggage.
All that is solid melts into air.
As an aside, large screen tvs for pro football are a revenue source for local bars, who might suffer if the above catches on.
Picture from the Juneteenth site, linked above.
Ankitha Gattupalli. "The Shift in India's Cultural Landscape: A Look at Contemporary Projects," provides a good discussion of cultural/community construction in India that provides a context—and critique—of projects such as this museum and so many other projects.
He cites this critique of much current work:
. . . shift in the aesthetic of contemporary cultural projects towards what he calls an “architecture of entertainment”. These projects reflect a sense of anxiety, chasing desires of global recognition, tight deadlines, and loud political statements. What results are spaces that become tentative and disconnected from means of impacting both the custodians and spectators of culture?
Which defines the BIG museum. It's where we are.
The goal should be:
Moving towards an era of responsible cultural architecture demands a higher level of inclusivity and generosity to the public. Post-democracy, cultural infrastructure was a means to create an identity of a democratic nation by recognizing local and tribal cultures and eradicating the gap between the privileged and non-privileged.
https://www.archdaily.com/1005830/cultural-architecture-in-india-in-conversation-with-hundredhands-and-mathew-and-ghosh-architects
Also note, same article:
While city-scaled projects convey India’s ambitions on a global platform, it is the grassroots initiatives of cultural communities that will sustain into the future. “What one sees in Bangalore is a palpable creative pulse of people with a vision for the city”, Ramachandran declares, “The country needs such kind of localized stewardship to forge influential spaces of cultural significance rather than ambitious large-scale shows of external value”.
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