National Juneteenth Museum

The Texas-based National Juneteenth Museum commemorates the federal holiday, Juneteenth, which celebrates the ending of slavery in the United States through the Emancipation Proclamation, signed into law in 1863 and enforced in Texas in 1865. A purposefully designed space serving as the epicenter for education, preservation, and celebration of Juneteenth globally, the 76,000 sqft building will feature immersive galleries, a business incubator, a food hall for local vendors, a Black Box flex space, and a theater.

Designed in collaboration with BIG alongside KAI Enterprises, the building’s shape is informed in plan by the Juneteenth flag, and in elevation by the gabled rooftops that define the Historic Southside of Fort Worth, a hub for African American community. The museum’s folded plate roof produces a series of ridges, peaks, and valleys of varying heights that combine to create a courtyard shaped as a ‘nova star’ (or ‘new star’) in the middle of the museum, signifying a new, free future for African Americans.

This building was a perfect chance for our engineers to design a distinct structural system, using timber exposed as architecture.  The superstructure is predominantly exposed mass timber, supported by a below grade concrete basement.  The vertical gravity framing consists of glulam columns supporting level 2, the roof, and the open façade layout. The level 2 framing consists of glulam purlins and girders supporting mass timber panels, arranged in a concentric pattern surrounding the courtyard and creating the architectural form in plan.

The unique shape of this roof created an opportunity to investigate folded plate structures, building off our experience from the DC Southwest Library in 2020. Innovative use of CLT and glulam purlins create the planes of the folded plate, with glulam top and bottom chords creating an extremely slim roof spanning up to 90ft and featuring a structural thickness of less than 2ft.

With a creative approach to architectural and structural design, the Museum will become a cultural and economic anchor for the Fort Worth neighborhood and abroad. Using sustainable structural materials and an innovative building form inspired by African American history, it nods to both the past and the future of free society and encapsulates the vision of Juneteenth – a holiday that “is not only American history – it is world history”. -Douglass Alligood, Partner at BIG