One Local Firm Is In The Running To Design Obama's Presidential Library

By Mae Rice in News on Dec 21, 2015 3:39PM

Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Obama Foundation has requested proposals for the Obama Presidential Library from seven design firms, including Chicago’s John Ronan Architects, according to an announcement today. Of the other six firms, four are based in New York, one in London and one in Genova, making Ronan's the only local firm.

The library will encompass “a library holding the Presidential archives, a museum focusing on the Obama Presidency and issues of our time, and space for programs and initiatives that advance the Foundation’s public mission,” the announcement said.

The library could be built in either Washington or Jackson Park, both on the South Side near Hyde Park, so firms must prepare a proposal for each site, according to the announcement.

The Obama Foundation sent out arequest for qualifications late last summer.

Previously, John Ronan has won the American Institute Of Architect's National Honor Award for both the Poetry Foundation, on the near North Side, and the Gary Comer Youth Center, in Greater Grand Crossing.

Reading the AIA's notes on Ronan's work is an entertaining foray into architectural lingo. For instance, according to the AIA's experts:

The Poetry Foundation is comprised of a building in dialogue with a garden created through erosion of an implied volume as described by the L-shaped property boundary. The garden interlocks with the building and is conceived as another “room,” part of the building’s slowly-unfolding spatial sequence revealed space by space, not unlike a poem is revealed line by line.

Here's hoping that the Obama Presidential Library is a similarly ambitious addition to the city's landscape.