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Two Chicago architects on short list for Eisenhower Memorial

Two Chicago architects are on a short list of seven designers, including Frank Gehry of Los Angeles, for the National Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., backers of the planned memorial announced Wednesday.

The Chicago architects are Ralph Johnson of Perkins+Will, best-known for his International Terminal at O'Hare Airport and the Boeing headquarters in the West Loop, and Ron Krueck of Krueck and Sexton Architects, acclaimed for his Spertus Institute and also part of the design team for the controversial Chicago Children's Museum in Grant Park.

 

Others on the short list include Gehry, who designed the Pritzker Pavilion and the BP Bridge in Millennium Park, as well as the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; Moshe Safdie of Somerville, Mass., architect of the Salt Lake City public library and the Habibat housing complex at the Montreal world's fair of 1967; and the landscape architect Peter Walker, who has worked extensively with Chicago architect Helmut Jahn.

Honoring the nation's 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who held the office from 1953 to 1961, the Eisenhower Memorial would be built on a four-acre site on the south side of the National Mall, just south of the National Air and Space Museum. A map on the commission's Web site shows a city street, Maryland Avenue, slicing through the site, raising the possibility that the street would have to be closed for the memorial to be built.

Asked about the hurdle that the street presents, Octavia Saine, a spokeswoman for the commission, said in a telephone inteview: "That is a topic of discussion."

The memorial is expected to cost about $100 million. So far, Saine said, a "very minimal amount" is in hand, adding that the commission is expected to start fund-raising soon.

The short-listed designers were selected on the basis of a sample of their built work and a statement of their design philosophy.  The next stage of evaluation is set for early December. A winner is scheduled to be picked in late March of 2009. 

The other contestants on the list are Robert Rogers and Jonathan Marvel of Rogers Marvel Architects in New York and San Francisco architect Stanley Saitowitz. 

 

"After eight years of effort, we are pleased to be at this stage of memorial development with a superb short-list of designers," Rocco C. Siciliano, chair of the memorial commission said in a news release.