QUICK TAKES - April 15, 2009

A team headed by the British architect David Adjaye and North Carolina’s Freelon Group won a high-profile competition Tuesday for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The museum will occupy an unusually prominent 5-acre parcel of land on the National Mall, near the Washington Monument. If current restrictions hold, it will be the last national monument or museum allowed on the Mall itself.

The winning proposal -- which remains preliminary -- calls for a largely horizontal building topped by a pair of inverted trapezoid forms and wrapped in perforated metal screens. Construction on the $500-million museum is set to begin in 2012 and be completed in 2015.

-- Christopher Hawthorne