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Excerpt:
The following is from the Aug. 29, 2007, edition of The Dallas Morning News

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Bush Library design firm chosen

By BRENDAN McKENNA
The Dallas Morning News

Robert A. M. Stern Related Links:  • Complete Dallas Morning    News story > > >  • Commentary on the architect  • The New York Times  • The news release  • More on the site selection

WASHINGTON – The architects selected to design the most visible incarnation of President Bush's legacy are no strangers to high profile and politically sensitive projects.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York City won the job in an announcement Tuesday, and its founding partner said that bringing together a learning center and a historical site at SMU made the project especially appealing.

"The president, if he were here, he'd say, 'Eventually people will not be so interested in George W. Bush but they will be interested in the ideas, the forums and debates and things that can occur,' " Mr. Stern said. "So I think he and I are on the absolute same wavelength in that respect."

The pick marks a major step in the likely development of the Bush library and museum at SMU, which believes it will result in a bonanza of benefits, from raising its profile nationally to making the campus a tourist destination.

Mr. Stern, who also is dean of the Yale School of Architecture and has done several other projects in Dallas and across Texas, said he was still formulating his vision for a building that, based on the selection panel directive, must incorporate the "spirit" of Mr. Bush's presidency.

"That's the million, the billion-dollar question in these days," he said. "We have to make a building that's very open and welcoming to people that is at the same time dignified. We also want to make a building that is sympathetic to the wonderful architecture of the SMU campus and yet be its own building at the same time."

He did not present an actual design or model to the selection panel, and he would not discuss the possible location. But he said, "There's a wonderful site available for the library that will have more than enough space to meet its needs."

Stern Architects, which he founded 38 years ago, was among three finalists chosen from roughly a dozen nationally prominent architectural firms invited in June to apply to design the library. . .

More.

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