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In advance of a formal presentation today on the SMU campus, USA Today sneak previews architect Robert A.M. Stern’s conceptual renderings for the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Yes, but will there be “freedom” involved?
One feature of the library will be a “freedom collection” with videos of testimony from “freedom activists and dissidents,” including residents of the former Czechoslovakia, North Korea and Iran. Visitors will enter the library through the large open space of the Freedom Hall, which will be topped by a lantern-like roof, Stern said. “In the evening hours,” he said, “it will be lit from within, and it will glow.”
He then went on to say that many SMU students are also lit from within during the evening hours.
Update at 3:52 p.m.: The Los Angeles Times‘ Christopher Hawthorne just offered this assessment of the center’s plans, which were formally presented at SMU this afternoon: “Architectural plans released today for the $250-million, 225,000-square-foot George W. Bush Presidential Center … carry no hint of the swagger, bravado or taste for confrontation that Bush was known for as president.”
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