Craig Dykers on designing the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library
Starting With Nature
Visualization: Snøhetta
As part of a recent TEDx event in Fargo, North Dakota, Craig Dykers presents Snøhetta's design process for the competition-winning design of the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library now under construction in the Dakota Badlands.
The competition for the planned Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library took place in 2020, with Oslo- and New York-based Snøhetta being unanimously chosen over the two other finalists, Henning Larsen and Studio Gang. The site for the library is near the entrance to the 70,000-acre Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands, a naturally distinctive area important important to Roosevelt, who visited almost every year from the 1880s to his death in 1919. Although Roosevelt's history is obviously important to the project, Snøhetta's design looks to nature first, going so far as to relocate the building from its intended site, in order to preserve a small prairie, and designing a low-slung wooden structure that integrates itself into the landscape. Watch Dykers, a naturally gifted public speaker, present these and other aspects of Snøhetta's design of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library: