Bush Presidential Library Design Unveiled in Dallas

Former First Lady Laura Bush, architect Robert A. M. Stern, and landscape architect Matthew Urbanski unveiled the design of the George W. Bush Presidential Center November 18 at a media briefing at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The Presidential Center will be the 14th "presidential library," as they are commonly known, and will be located at SMU, five miles north of downtown Dallas, and will include a library as part of the complex. The design is "a modern brick and limestone structure that complements the American Georgian character of the SMU campus, set within a low-maintenance, quintessentially Texas landscape," said a news release announcing the unveiling. I talked with Peter Morris Dixon of Robert A. M. Stern Architects about the project yesterday. He said the firm and Mrs. Bush  were eager to help us pull together a feature article as the Presidential Center is constructed, so we will be watching the progress. Laura Bush gave an exclusive interview to American Libraries last year in which she said she would be heavily involved in the creation of the library. “We have a very good architect,” the First Lady said, pointing out that she would be working with the National Archives and Records Administration, which oversees presidential libraries, “to develop everything that surrounds the papers,” including matters of conservation and access and “the ways that the papers are cataloged and put together.”