Archinect - News

Maya Lin's next sculptural installation will grace the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago

2022-08-08T13:10:00-04:00

The forthcoming Obama Presidential Library, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien, will now include a sculptural installation from Maya Lin, according to an announcement made on August 4 by the Obama Foundation.

The sculptural piece, titled “Seeing Through the Universe,” will anchor the library’s newly-announced water garden, which has been named to honor Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham. It includes a stone oculus and pebble water feature surrounded by pathways leading away from the installation and into the library’s other recently-unveiled outdoor gathering spaces designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.

“When we thought about what may be a fitting way to commemorate my mother’s influence on my sister and me, I thought about where she would want to be in this space,” this year’s A’22 keynote speaker said in a statement. “I could picture her sitting on one of the ...

SPF:a's new Obama Sports Complex is inaugurated in Los Angeles

2022-06-29T17:24:00-04:00

It’s opening day for SPF:architects’ new Michelle and Barack Obama Sports Complex in Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills neighborhood. The new development replaces the old 29-acre Rancho Cienega Sports Complex and was developed in conjunction with Buro Happold and Hood Design Studio.

The scheme critically includes what is being labeled as one of the city’s first Net Zero Energy (NZE) buildings — the all-new basketball wing of the larger, 40,000-square-foot facility — and is landscaped in a grid to evince five distinct ecologies: high desert, canyon, coastal, chaparral, and medicinal.

Image © Mike Kelley

Hood’s drought-tolerant landscape design is also said to be inspired by the early-20th-century abstract painters like George Braque and Fernand Leger. The upgraded facility it surrounds is an amalgam of pre-engineered metal buildings (PEMB) deliberately selected to reduce costs and the environmental impacts of materials used in the project, which came together at the start of 2015 thanks to s...

Obama's remarks at the 2022 AIA Conference on Architecture speak on the intersection of inequality and sustainable design

2022-06-27T19:13:00-04:00

Barack Obama was greeted by a packed house at the close of the Friday session of this year’s A’22 Conference in his adopted hometown of Chicago.

Speaking to the capacity audience in a Q&A hosted by new AIA President Dan Hart, the two-term former U.S. President used his platform to touch upon the crisis of available affordable housing in America.

“Chicago is a case study of times architecture reinforced inequity,” he said, echoing long-held criticism of the city advanced recently by filmmaker Jordan Peele and documented by other observers of the city for a period of decades. Obama then spoke about the role government can play in aiding the delivery of more affordable units to the residential market, claiming that, in some cases, left-leaning policymakers are to blame for the predicament facing a number of states and municipalities.

“Good planning and skilled architects are needed, but this is where government policy makes a difference,” he said. “Sprawl in America isn’t good for our...

Barack Obama to speak at the 2022 AIA Conference on Architecture

2022-05-31T17:56:00-04:00

Former U.S. President Barack Obama has been announced as the surprise headline speaker on Day 3 of this year’s A’22 Conference in Chicago.

Obama will join for a moderated conversation about a yet-unnamed topic at the close of the conference’s Friday session on June 24th at the McCormick Place Convention Center.

His appearance follows that of his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, who spoke at the A’17 conference about the importance of equity and diversity efforts in the world of professional design. The President’s appearance comes just a few months removed from the groundbreaking of the TWBTA-designed Obama Presidential Center complex in Chicago's Jackson Park which is scheduled to open in 2025 following years of delay.

Obama’s legacy and impacts as it relates to the fields of architecture and urban planning are still being examined by scholars, but he was influential in mandating new stan...

Watch Barack Obama break ground on the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago

2021-09-29T18:29:00-04:00

On Tuesday, Barack Obama broke ground on his highly anticipated presidential center on the South Side of Chicago.

In an hour-long ceremony at the 19-acre site in Jackson Park, Obama, joined by his wife and former First Lady, Michelle Obama, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, shared their remarks celebrating the long-awaited project before scooping up dirt with commemorative shovels.

“This day has been a long time coming,” said Mr. Obama. “We had originally hoped to hold a bigger, festive event, but the pandemic had other plans, so we’re keeping this small for now.”

Departing from similar projects recognizing former presidents, the center has been envisioned to host lectures, trainings, cultural events, concerts, and conversations, instead of acting as a presidential library.

“We want this center to be more than a static museum or a source of archival research,” the former president continued. “It won’t just be a collection of campaign memorabilia o...

The Obama Presidential Center is finally set to break ground on Tuesday

2021-09-24T19:42:00-04:00

A major milestone in the construction of one of Chicago’s most anticipated new developments is officially set, according to a late afternoon announcement from the Obama Foundation.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that an official groundbreaking ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center will be taking place on Tuesday.

The announcement comes on the heels of an August supreme court ruling that cleared the final hurdle to groundbreaking following a last-minute emergency motion to halt construction based on potential damages to the neighboring park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.

We've got big news!

Our virtual groundbreaking festivities for the Obama Presidential Center will take place on Monday, Sept. 27 and Tuesday, Sept. 28.

Watch a special message from @BarackObama and @MichelleObama now. pic.twitter.com/yJ6M4DLL2A
— The Obama Foundation (@ObamaFoundation) September 24, 2021

The Billie Tsien and Tod Williams-designed center completed a comprehensive federal review process ear...

Obama Presidential Center construction continues after Supreme Court ruling

2021-08-23T12:52:00-04:00

Construction of the Obama Presidential Center is set to continue at Chicago’s Jackson Park following a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The project, designed by Tod Williams & Billie Tsien Architects in collaboration with Interactive Design Architects (IDEA), was subjected to a legal challenge which argued that the project would negatively impact the park’s historic setting.

Opponents of the center filed an emergency motion asking for a writ of injunction to be issued to block any additional groundbreaking of the center. One of the applicants, a nonprofit organization called Protect Our Parks, opposed the project on its current site, arguing the scheme should be built “on Chicago’s South Side outside of a dedicated public park.” A U.S. District Court Judge previously dismissed a suit by the organization in 2019.

Image: Obama Foundation

The motion cited concerns over the cutting down of trees in Jackson Park which are critical to migratory birds, as well as noise ...

Sir David Adjaye receives RIBA Gold Medal at illustrious virtual event

2021-05-28T17:14:00-04:00

Earlier this week, on May 26th, celebrated Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye formally received the 2021 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Royal Gold Medal in a virtual ceremony. Surprise luminaries from around the world, including former U.S. President Barack Obama and U2 singer Bono, participated to congratulate Adjaye on his historic accomplishment.

Calling in from Ghana, Adjaye received his award from the UK’s high commissioner to Ghana, Iain Walker, on behalf of the Queen.

Sir David Adjaye receives the RIBA 2021 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, presented by the British High Commissioner Iain Walker. Image: RIBA/Francis Kokoroko 2021

“It’s incredibly humbling and a great honor to have my peers recognize the work I have developed with my team and its contribution to the field over the past 25 years,” Adjaye said upon hearing the news that he received the Royal Gold Medal. “Architecture, for me, has always been about the creation of beauty to edify all people...

The Obama Presidential Center continues to follow thru with diversifying its construction workforce and 'create a diverse pipeline of talent'

2021-03-31T19:53:00-04:00

With pre-construction underway, the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) announced more details of its construction costs and economic impact for Chicago. In February, the Obama Foundation shared that in addition to breaking ground in 2021, they expressed their commitment to providing subcontracting opportunities to a more diverse workforce.

"We believe the Obama Presidential Center should be built by a team that looks like the Center's surrounding community, and we're working hard to make sure that happens."

Image courtesy of Obama Foundation

WBEZ Chicago's Natalie Moore reports on the Foundation's promise and provides more details on the Center's workforce initiative progress. On March 10th, the Foundation stated workforce goals would prioritize South and West Side residents. "The OPC Construction Workforce Initiative will create an inclusive construction workforce trained with skills to build the OPC, and create a diverse pipeline of talent that can be funneled to construction project...

Obama Presidential Center will break ground this year

2021-02-04T11:12:00-05:00

The Obama Foundation announced yesterday the conclusion of a four-year-long federal review process for the Obama Presidential Center (OPC), and intent to break ground on the Center in 2021.

The City of Chicago has already scheduled the start of pre-construction work due for April, which will include the relocation of utility lines on the site. Construction of the OPC will begin in the second half of the year, starting with preliminary roadwork, according to the Obama Foundation.

"Getting to this point wouldn’t have been possible without the folks in the community who have been a part of this process along the way," said President Obama in a video message. "Michelle and I want to thank you for making this project even better — a space for the community, built in partnership with the community. We know that by working together, we can unlock the South Side’s fullest potential — and help set up our city, our country, and our world for even better years still to come."

The estimated co...

Obama Center federal reviews come close to an end

2020-07-21T11:48:00-04:00

There is an end in sight for a pair of years-long federal reviews of the Obama Presidential Center, and based on a Thursday briefing we now know City Hall will not insist on replacement land outside of Jackson Park to make up for the 19.3 acres the complex will occupy.

President Obama chose to build his presidential center in Jackson Park, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designed by landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. This is what sparked the series of reviews around the project. Lyn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times writes that, "the debate over the use of a historic park has over the years...exposed race and class fault lines in Chicago when it comes to the questions of whose voices should prevail in the fate of a historic park."

City Hall held a webinar to work through preservation concerns around the park, and Sweet reports that the reviews could be done soon.

Dignified Obama Presidential Center design receives subtle updates

2019-10-28T14:56:00-04:00

A new set of renderings have been unveiled for the controversial Obama Presidential Center (OPC) designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) on Chicago's South Side.

The latest views present a more transparent and animated complex that has been tweaked to address ongoing aesthetic and siting concerns raised by the local community, landscape preservationists, and the design media.

Aerial and ground level views of the proposed presidential center. Images courtesy of Obama Foundation.

Compared with previous iterations of the project, the latest designs feature taller, more slender proportions as well as a greater number of openings and more glass. A central, multi-story entry portal rising 88-feet now marks the main face of the center's 235-foot tower, for example, while a retooled corner entry garden is marked along the building's mass by a faceted carve. The white stone-wrapped tower is set to be surrounded by landscapes designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, In...

Former President Barack Obama to keynote 2019 Greenbuild International Conference

2019-08-29T19:59:00-04:00

Former President Barack Obama will deliver the keynote speech at the 2019 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo this year in Atlanta, Georgia.

The conference is organized by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), and bills itself as "the only event genuinely dedicated to sustainability in the built environment, from the sessions we present to the products on the show floor to the way the event is produced," according to its website.

Mahesh Ramanujam, president & CEO of USGBC, said via press release, “President Obama is a global leader and a long-time friend of the green building community. While in office, his administration negotiated the landmark Paris Climate Accords, expanded the impact of our field and helped open the door for energy efficiency investments in both the public and private sectors," adding, "I know that when he joins us on the keynote stage in November, he will impart his ideas, passion and vision to our growing global green building family.”

Th...

Judge dismisses lawsuit against planned Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park

2019-06-11T18:48:00-04:00

In a surprising move, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the city of Chicago was within its authority when it approved the Obama Foundation’s plan to build the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park. After listening to nearly an hour of arguments on both sides, U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey said construction of the sprawling Obama center campus can begin and dismissed the lawsuit filed by environmentalists that aimed to halt it.

Designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the planned Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park has faced strong opposition from the start and was barred from commencing construction due to the pending lawsuit brought forward by the group, Protect Our Parks.

"Even though this might be an important case, it’s not a difficult case," said U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey. "The park should have … be considered for what it is — a park and not a nature preserve."

Image courtesy of Obama Foundation

Obama Foundation CEO David Simas commented on the ruling in a statement: "We are thrilled with the City’s victory and grateful to all of those in Chicago and beyond who have believed in this project and made their voices heard every step of the way. Our vision for the Obama Presidential Center has always been one where the location reinforces the project’s core aims: a celebration of history, a place of connection and engagement for the public, and an investment in commun...

Los Angeles honors President Obama with renaming of two roads

2018-09-05T16:13:00-04:00

Rodeo Road will be renamed after President Barack Obama, city leaders decided this week. But it’s not the first roadway in LA that lawmakers agreed to name after the 44th president. In 2017, the state legislature approved a resolution to designate the stretch of the 134 freeway that runs between Pasadena and Eagle Rock as the President Barack H. Obama Highway. A year later, however, there’s little evidence of that decision.

A 3.7 mile stretch of road in Los Angeles, now called Rodeo Road, will be renamed Obama Boulevard honoring the country’s first African American president. Located in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw neighborhood, the road was chosen for its significance in the black community and its relation to a 2007 rally site Obama held at the beginning of his campaign.

Obama Boulevard is not scheduled to be fully renamed until Presidents Day in 2019. Another Obama named stretch of road in Los Angeles is also awaiting new signage. A stretch of the 134 freeway running between Pasadena and Eagle Rock has been approved to be named the President Barack H. Obama Highway, however the money for new signage has yet to be raised.

University of Chicago faculty sign letter opposing current plans for Obama Presidential Center amidst changes

2018-01-08T19:35:00-05:00

From disapprovals over the design to concerns about parking, the Obama Presidential Center has been met with strong opposition since its unveiling. In particular, residents of Chicago's South Side, where the center will be located, have been quite critical of the Foundation's location choice as well as its refusal to sign a Community Benefits Agreement.

Joining in on the conversation, more than 100 University of Chicago faculty members have now penned a letter concerning the Obama Center, opposing its plans on economic and preservation grounds. Though faculty members support locating the Center in Chicago's South Side—near the university where the former President once taught—they share concerns expressed by neighborhood groups about its currently planned placement at Jackson Park.

Woodlawn residents and Hyde Parkers protest current Obama Center plans back in November. Courtesy of Southside Together Organizing for Power.

According to the criticism, locating the Center in Jackson Pa...

Obama Center parking garage proposal: community groups offer feedback after latest design revisions

2017-12-28T14:15:00-05:00

The Obama Center design team has been reworking plans for a proposed controversial garage on a portion of the historic Midway Plaisance, across the street from where the presidential complex is to be built in Jackson Park. [...] When I left off on this story in November, Tod Williams, one of the architects, said relocating the garage was under consideration, given the concerns of community groups for the historic publicly owned Midway property.

Curbed Chicago picks up the story where the Chicago Sun-Times left off and reports about some of the praise and criticism that was presented at a meeting the Obama Foundation had called on December 20 at its Hyde Park Headquarters. The hearing was led by the project's architects Tod Williams, Billie Tsien, Dina Griffin as well as the landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.

Chicago's South Side community expresses concern about the Obama Presidential Center

2017-10-03T14:12:00-04:00

The Obama Presidential Center will be transformative, just as it will be truly urban, only up to a point. It’s bound to disappoint anybody who forgets that Obama’s political strategy, as distinct from his larger role in the culture, has always been unshakably centrist. Because (among other reasons) his race continues to make him a lightning rod, a magnet for unhinged opinion, he has preferred the middle to the edge.

Residents of the South Side in Chicago raise concerns about the location of the new center and complain that the Obama Foundation refuses to sign a Community Benefits Agreement guaranteeing construction jobs and other patronage to members of the South Side community.

Funding of Obama Presidential Center raises concerns

2017-08-24T09:00:00-04:00

Plans for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park are being firmed up largely out of public view, and one watchdog group is sounding the alarm about the lack of transparency. Decisions on the design of the center, the park’s golf course and even whether to eliminate some roads in the park are being worked out by the Obama Foundation, City Hall and the Chicago Park District.

Designed by the New York-based firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the Obama Presidential Center will consist of three buildings—a museum, a forum, and a library located near a lagoon that runs into Lake Michigan in Chicago's Jackson Park neighborhood. However, recently Jackson Park Watch has sent a letter to City Hall outlining their concerns about the lack of transparency throughout the planning process.

After many months, the Chicago Park District and the Chicago Department of Transportation have not yet put a price tag on the roadway and infrastructure changes tied to the Obama Center and the proposal to merge the Jackson Park and South Shore golf courses into a single championship-caliber course, which would involve closing Cornell Drive and Marquette Drive, building a pair of new underpasses, possibly an underground garage and improving the shoreline.

The past four community meetings in June and July have not provided the public with any details about proposed street c...

Obama's Presidential Center through the landscape architecture lens

2017-05-24T15:15:00-04:00

The most important question related to the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side doesn’t have that much to do with its architecture. It is instead: What kind of landscape stewardship can a presidential museum and library offer? To be located in Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted’s Jackson Park, the project already has a heap of canonical landscape history to contend with. So can the Obama library make a great park greater?

"So this new landscape has the potential to improve upon the already very good. But for whom?," Zach Mortice asks in his piece for Landscape Architecture Magazine. "Will these grounds remain public and accessible for all South Siders and Chicagoans, free of charge?"

The Twitterverse Responds to Obama's Presidential Library

2017-05-08T18:34:00-04:00

During Obama's unveiling of plans for his upcoming Presidential Library and Center, the former POTUS revealed his young ambitions of being an architect. During yesterdays events, he proclaimed "I wanted to be an architect when I was a kid. Somehow, I took a wrong turn." Back in June, Obama chose architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to design the foundation, but the community-organizer from Chicago has remained quite active in the planning process for his building, even sending the team back to the drawing boards after finding their initial design a little too quiet.

Blair Kamin, of the The Chicago Tribune, is as of yet, the only reporter to give his take on the plans. While he is hopeful that kinks will be worked out, he would like to see Obama's populist agenda for the center reflected more in the completed design. But, now that the plans have been released to the public, everyone gets to be a critic and responses to the design, concept, potential effects to the surrounding com...

Take a look at the first images of the design for the Obama Presidential Center by TWBTA

2017-05-03T18:55:00-04:00

As promised, initial designs for the Obama Presidential Center by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects were released today. The Center will be composed of three buildings—the Museum, the Forum, and the Library—that surround a rectangular plaza.

The four primary sides of the Museum, the tallest structure on the site, are hexagons, sloping out as they rise before tapering back in about a quarter of the way up the building. In the drawings, the Museum, as well as the other two buildings, appears to be clad in stone. The façades are punctured with a few narrow rectangular windows. On the south-western corner of the Museum, a chunk is cut out of the bottom half and the resulting vertical surfaces of the indentation are glazed. On the opposite corner, the top half is cut out, producing a balcony. A large entrance on the southern side leads out to the plaza via a ramp.

The Forum and the Library line the southern and eastern edges of the plaza. They will be single-story structures with terrac...

Obama reacts to Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects's first design for the Obama Presidential Library

2017-02-24T12:47:00-05:00

Interviewed by Paul Goldberger, the New York architecture critic who advised the Obama Foundation on the architect selection process for the library, Williams and Tsien revealed conceptual ideas for the project, said Obama critiqued an early plan of theirs as too quiet [...] "He said it was too unflashy," ArchDaily quoted Tsien as saying. "He looked at what we did and he said, 'I said you could be sort of quiet, but I think you're a little too quiet.'"

The Barack Obama Presidential Center may end up costing up to $1.5B

2017-02-23T12:24:00-05:00

At an estimated $1.5 billion, the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago may end up costing more than three times what the George W. Bush Museum cost, according to new reports. This is primarily due to the fact that the center will house not one institution but two—both a presidential library and a museum about the lives of the former president and his wife. Moreover, Obama avoided doing much fundraising while in office, making it all the more difficult to come up with the funds.

“It won’t be easy,” said Tod Williams of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, designers of the Center. “It’s not just about preserving the past. It’s about the future.”

As President Obama leaves the White House, a closer look at his urban policy legacy

2016-12-30T18:04:00-05:00

City residents and urbanists had reasons to believe Obama would usher in a new urban era. [...] Now, as he leaves the White House, Obama’s legacy is being evaluated on many fronts, including within the realm of urban policy. In a new book called Urban Policy in the Time of Obama, academics appraise his successes and failures. CityLab spoke with the book’s editor, James DeFillippis, an associate professor in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects selected to design the Obama Presidential Center

2016-06-30T13:23:00-04:00

The Obama Foundation has selected Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners (TWBTA) to lead the design team for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, and Interactive Design Architects (IDEA) to be their partner as they begin this exciting project. TWBTA stood out in their commitment to explore the best ways of creating an innovative center for action that inspires communities and individuals to take on our biggest challenges.

The husband and wife team of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) first started their practice back in 1986, with Paul Schulhof becoming the firm's third partner in 2013. The thirty person team is headquartered in New York.

"We believe that architecture is the coming together of art and use, and can bring a sense of grace to life," the architects state in the announcement. "The greatest buildings are places, which contribute to more than their particular task by elevating and improving the world.

"We are deeply moved by the mission of the Obama Foundation and the role the Center can play in empowering that mission. It is a joy, an honor, and a responsibility to create a place that reflects the optimism and integrity of the President and the First Lady."

TWBTA have designed a number of notable and highly-praised institutional projects in the past, including the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, and the Center for the A...

How will President Obama's move to require overtime pay change architecture?

2016-05-31T19:44:00-04:00

For decades, bosses [in certain professions] have groomed their assistants to be the next generation of big shots by working them long hours for low wages. Call it the “Devil Wears Prada” economy, after the novel depicting life working for a fictionalized Anna Wintour, the longtime Vogue editor. But now, with the Obama administration moving to require time-and-a-half overtime pay for most salaried employees making less than $47,476 a year, that business model is suddenly under assault.

"The change presents more than an economic challenge for the companies that rely on the willingness of young, ambitious workers to trade pay and self-respect for a shot at a prestige job down the road."

The article doesn't explicitly reference architecture, but as Archinect's past coverage on the state of internships in the field makes clear, it could. Many firms employ a business model that involves underpaying interns and other young workers – or not paying them at all.

Like many of the employers quoted in the article, some architects contend that this culture breeds better architects in the long run. Additionally, since some firms won't be able to afford overtime hours, their interns will end up getting less "training time" (and fewer opportunities to impress the highers-up).

Thoughts?

For related coverage, check out these links:

David Adjaye is the best bet for the Obama Presidential Library – but not because of the color of his skin

2016-01-13T21:00:00-05:00

The pervading sentiment in the architectural community is that Adjaye, a Ghanaian British architect, is the odds-on favorite... What no one has suggested publicly (though its oft-mentioned in social settings) is that Adjaye will be chosen because he is black. The rationalization is President Obama will “naturally" tap him for the job... Adjaye, who was born in Tanzania to Ghanian parents, and holds British citizenship, has a very different experience than his African American peers...

"The black British experience is a far cry from the African American experience, and it's undermining and lazy to presuppose that the first black President will favor an architect simply because of the color of his skin."

Related:

What does President Obama's final year in office mean for architecture?

2016-01-13T13:18:00-05:00

President Obama gave his final State of the Union speech last night, which prompted the AIA to issue a statement outlining policies it feels President Obama and Republicans in Congress should enact this year in order to bolster the health of the architectural profession. These include:

• Strengthening the Historic Tax Credit

• Passing The National Design Services Act

• Retaining 2030 energy efficiency targets for federal buildings

The majority of these initiatives are designed to ease financial burdens, both by reducing student debt while stimulating tax incentives for construction (the AIA advocates for making the 179D Energy Efficient Commercial Building Tax Deduction permanent). Among other things, The National Design Services Act allows students to work off their academic loans through community service, while the AIA describes the Historic Tax Credit as a method of "promot[ing] investment in the buildings that make America what it is today." Archinect plans to follow the state...

These are the seven finalists in the Obama Presidential Center competition

2015-12-21T13:35:00-05:00

Today, The Barack Obama Foundation issued a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) to seven architectural firms, one of which will ultimately be selected to design the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) on the South Side of Chicago. [...] Although the RFP process is not a design competition, the RFP will require defined, visual responses from each candidate to present creative ideas in response to the Foundation’s project goals.

After sending out RFQs to a broad range of (undisclosed but widely speculated) architectural firms on August 26, the President and First Lady, together with advisers from the Obama Foundation, have found time to sit down and select seven finalists to receive a formal Request for Proposal. The top-picks aren't surprising and reflect the direction public predictions had already taken:

Adjaye Associates, London, England
Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York, NY
John Ronan Architects, Chicago, Illinois
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genova, Italy
SHoP Architects, New York, NY
Snøhetta, New York, NY
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, New York, NY

Martin Nesbitt, chairman of the Obama Foundation, said: "These finalists offer a variety of backgrounds and styles, and any one of them would be an excellent choice. We are excited to see this process moving forward because the Obama Presidential Center will be so much more than a library – this facility will seek to inspire citizens across the globe to...