Obama picks Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects for Chicago presidential library

The foundation charged with building Barack Obama’s presidential library in Chicago has chosen the firm behind the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts to design the project.

In winning the bid, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, a firm captained by the eponymous married couple, edged out some of the top names in the design industry, including SHoP Architects (the firm that designed the Barclays Center), Diller Scofidio + Renfro (a High Line co-designer), and Snøhetta (the new San Francisco Museum of Modern Art addition). Their cultural spaces include the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago and the Lakeside Center in New York’s Prospect Park.

The two groups will oversee construction of the Chicago library, a project that could involve collaboration with up to 15-20 architects, the foundation said. “We were extremely impressed by each of the proposals from the seven firms and thank them for their passion, effort, resources and time throughout this process”. “If there is anything that characterizes their work, its a combination of dignity, beauty, and understatement”. John Ronan Architects, the only Chicago firm to make the finalist round, also lost out in the end.

The architects were last in the news when their American Folk Art Museum in NY, a gem of a building on West 53rd Street, was torn down to make way for the planned expansion of the Museum of Modern Art. Writing for artnet News, Karen Wong, deputy director of New York’s New Museum and managing director of Adjaye’s London studio from 2000 to 2006, described him as the odds-on favorite. An additional layer of controversy involved the decision to build copies of the old Merion galleries inside TWBTA’s new museum, producing an odd sort of architectural simulacrum that allowed the paintings to be hung just as they had in their original setting.

Their other major works include the Barnes Foundation art museum in Philadelphia and the now-demolished American Folk Art Museum in NY. Its C.V. Starr East Asian Library opened on the UC Berkeley campus in 2008.