The view near one end of the National Mall in Washington will change when the imposing marble monuments, formal gardens and row after row of stern federal buildings are joined by giant, curving swoops of white glass that glow in the night.

With a roof of sweeping wings that look like giant paper doves landing on the building, the preliminary design for a new headquarters for the U.S. Institute of Peace was recently unveiled and heartily approved by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

The institute, now on 17th Street NW in the capital, is a government think tank created after the Vietnam War as a federal counterpoint to the Defense Department. It was conceived as an institution that seeks resolution through peace, not war.

Among the early leaders of the effort to get a Peace Institute established was the late U.S. Sen. Spark M. Matsunaga, D-Hawai'i.

While many Americans may be remembered and honored for their valor in combat, fewer are remembered for what they have done for peace. Matsunaga is remembered for both.

A decorated combat veteran of the Army's all-Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in World War II, Matsu-naga was a lifelong peacemaker as well.

Believing from his youth that peacemaking is as much an art as making war, and that it can be learned, Matsunaga introduced legislation calling for the establishment of a "national academy of peace." In 1979, Matsunaga was named chairman of the Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution.

The U.S. Institute Peace Act of 1984 was based upon the commission's findings and recommendations. After the institute's founding in 1984, the senator was a tireless supporter of its work.

Last year, Congress gave the institute $100 million for a headquarters on one of the last available building sites on the edge of the Mall, Constitution Avenue and 23rd Street NW, north of the Lincoln Memorial and near the State Department.

Designed by Moshe Safdie, the institute's 154,000-square-foot headquarters will overlook the Lincoln Memorial and will be prominent in the skyline, especially at night, when it will be lighted from within and the translucent wings will be aglow, Safdie said.

"The Mall is always a challenge because it is a classic space," said arts commissioner Witold Rybczynski, who complimented Safdie on a design that he said met the challenge successfully.

The building is not only new office space but is also envisioned as a federal building open to the public that will host many meetings, dinners and receptions. Because of that, it promises to be glowing quite a bit, which concerns the National Park Service and the arts commission.

Safdie has been asked to ensure that the glowing wings do not compete with the grandeur of the Lincoln Memorial at night.

The structure must go through an approval process with the planning commission and more detailed approval for the aesthetics of building materials before the groundbreaking in 2007.

Also, the arts commission has given reluctant approval to the complete design of a security perimeter around the Lincoln Memorial, something it has struggled with for years.

"No one wants to do this; no one likes this," said commission member Pamela Nelson, echoing the sentiment of a board that disliked the idea of an obtrusive security perimeter and wrestled with having to retrofit such a carefully designed monument. "It's squeezing your heart to vote on this."

The design places a row of bollards in front of the memorial and hidden in rows of hedges. The sticking point was whether to integrate the bollards as part of the memorial or set them far back and hope their presence is diminished by the surroundings.

Some information in this report was taken from the Web site of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Dvorak wrote this article for The Washington Post.