Designers solicited for Bush library
DALLAS - In another sign that the George W. Bush Presidential Library is likely headed for Southern Methodist University, several architectural firms have been approached about designing the project and tailoring it to the private campus. This step by the library’s selection committee appears to reaffirm that SMU, which has been the lone finalist for the Bush library since December, is only an official announcement shy of sealing the long-awaited deal. In an 11-page solicitation proposal obtained by The Dallas Morning News, designers are told the library will “be adjacent to the SMU campus” and that the look must comply with the university’s “distinct architectural character.”
One of the perks of being President is that once you’re done, you get to figure out where to put all your stuff. All the little trinkets from various world leaders, sports teams, and various and assorted supplicants have to be moved out of the White House…and it’s not as if you can just stick the stuff in a container at Uncle Bob’s Self-Storage. No, as President, people want to be able to treat all the detritus as if it has some quasi-historical iconic value, so colleges and universities will knock themselves out competing for the right to construct a monument to a President’s stuff. Why any educational institution with any pride or even a shred of dignity would want to be the site for Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s © Presidential Library and Propaganda Emporium is beyond me. You’d think the good folks at Southern Methodist University would be better served by…oh, I don’t know…a tittie bar??
Anyway, given that the monstrosity is going to be built somewhere, and quite likely at SMU, the fine, upstanding citizens at FARK are holding a design contest. There have been a number of interesting entries, but this is by far my favorite:
It’s simple, sleek design is understated and modest. Yet it goes to the heart of the Bush Presidency, using architecture to point up what the sum total of eight years of The Worst President EVER © really amounts to.
After the jump, you can check out some of my honorable mentions….
