I think this should have been an open competion instead!

I gather Norman Foster’s office (Lord Foster hasn’t touched a project personally in twenty years from what I understand) took their inspiration from “the Day the Earth Stood Still” because that swirly parking garage has a definite Klatu vibe going.

As for the rest, what and more importantly why?

Particularly the Diller and Predock entries are just bizarre. What ever happened to Antoine Predock’s design language?

Has three dimensional modeling with computers really brought us to this level of visual pollution and inanity? It is interesting, to me anyway, to contrast the Foster, Diller, and Predock proposals with Tadao Ando’s artwave proposal for Oslo – the Ando project had an extremely clear design language, a reason for being what it was, and a reason to exist.

Another interesting comparison to be drawn is between this concourse and the project actually realized by I.M. Pei for the Islamic museum in Doha Qatar. The Qatar project is a masterpiece and this one is not precisely for the reason that others have pointed out. In Doha a successful bridge is made between Islamic tradition, siting, and modernist language. However, in this project the response is entirely to site and the language of Washington, none of the intent of the building comes through the too heavy coat of context.

Neither is a museum a monument, it doesn’t have the same purpose as Maya Lin’s Vietnam Are Memorial or Peter Eisenmann’s Holocaust Memorial. It would be better, though, if some middle ground could be found without making something that is totally middle of the road.