Designing the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library
What would a restorative place really look like? What would a regenerative building feel like? What would it mean if a building project treated biodiversity as part of its purpose and site strategy? What does it look like when we bring back our prairies? What should a building and its landscape prioritize to celebrate a conservation-focused president? And what will this place look like in 2100, if we do all we can today?
These are some of the big questions that drove the design development of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library (TRPL), slated to open in the summer of 2026. Roosevelt was known for his conservation efforts and for the solace he found in North Dakota, where he went to recover after his wife and mother died on the same day in the same house in New York City. He wrote that he could “never have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota,” and he maintained his deep connection to the place and the people for the rest of his life. This is why the foundation dedicated to his legacy sought to build his Presidential library and museum there.
Pursuing full Living Building Challenge (LBC) 4.0 certification has been an enormous undertaking for this project, partly due to its remote location in Medora, North Dakota. Importantly, the LBC target was built into the design competition and the entire team has been working toward that goal from day one.
Snøhetta’s architects and landscape architects won the design competition after an immersive selection process that brought the teams to the Badlands. Snøhetta’s design conceives the Library as the landscape. It conserves much of the 93 acres, placing the grassland at the heart of the project. The building is a powerful, low-rise form, evocative of the Badlands landscape. With its green roof, natural wood, and rammed earth walls it engages and mimics the site and offers inspiring vistas.
JLG Architects serves as Architect of Record and sustainability lead, Confluence as Landscape Architect, Snøhetta as Design Architect and Design Landscape Architect, and JE Dunn is the contractor. The team utilized LBC because of its strong alignment with Roosevelt’s point of view and influence. They are also employing LEED 4.1 and SITES for this model project.
The team has focused heavily on site and conservation and informed their design and goals based on community engagement and feedback. The project aims to help visitors learn from Theodore Roosevelt’s life and leadership, engaging visitors in conserving the land, and connecting visitors to the adjacent Badlands that are the landscape of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and National Grasslands.
Changing patterns
Broadly, the team’s approach is that a building must do good. They are continually evaluating what “net positive” means in every context and at every scale. Craig Dykers, Snøhetta’s Founding Partner, notes that “the location is powerful as it speaks to TR’s life and legacy, yet it is also a challenging place to build. Our team has found the Living Building Challenge is a clear way to communicate the levels of care that the project needs to attain.”
Jenn Carroll, LFA, MPM, Manager of Sustainability for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation, says that the organization is thrilled to have the opportunity to be a leader in the region. “We are showing that this can be done, even here.” Carroll notes that since its inception, the project has been getting a lot of attention from local businesses, and from elected officials across the state.
Patrick Thibaudeau, LFA, LEED Fellow, CCS, Principal Sustainability Officer at JLG Architects, suggests we’re not just building a presidential library. We’re building an idea that has powerful transformative impact, changing business as usual for the way we live, learn and work for the next century.” The design intends to create a total net positive legacy for the next 100 years and more. “This is how we practice now with all our clients,” he says, “and it really changes your perspective.”
Christine Beaubien, LEED AP, Project Manager with contractor JE Dunn, has been hip-deep in the Living Building Challenge and soaking up the intentions and process. “I love that it’s called a challenge,” she says, “This is a custom project in a very remote part of the US, so there are a lot of challenges.”
The library is the landscape
The Snøhetta team recognized a raw beauty in the ancient Badlands, a landscape that has never been glaciated. This quality, Michelle Delk, Snøhetta Partner and Landscape Architect Partner says, “allows for another level of reading than is ordinarily possible. You can see the evidence of the geologic eras and the histories of use are visible, too.”
This beauty — what Theodore Roosevelt called a “stark beauty” — inspired the team to let the grassland be the centerpiece. The accessible boardwalk loop is designed as if the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt were inviting people into the landscape in the center of the loop, where conservation — of historical documents and the land — will be visible. They also played with perception, providing a series of vistas at different levels, so that visitors can see erosion and other landscape elements. The building invites people up on the building roof, with two sides tucked into the earth and creates a gentle roof, like a butte.
“We have all spent a lot of time thinking about what Theodore Roosevelt might have wanted this place to become,“ Thibaudeau says. “In many ways, the project is the site. There is a building there, but the building and the site are understood as one thing.”
“Almost everyone on the design and owner core teams has spent time doing seed collection out in the Badland landscape. This connects us all to this project and place in a deep and personal way.”
Grassland reclamation and biodiversity
What “deeply rooted in place” means for biodiversity is a massive planting and native seed collection effort. The site is 93 acres, and the team is working with ecologists and university researchers, including crews from North Dakota State University (NDSU) to collect and grow seeds from the site at a nearby location since these plants are not available at most regional nurseries. The roof portion alone will have 400,000 plantings, and the TRPL staff and partners are helping create a land management approach that naturally eliminates invasive species. The seeds that are being nursed by NDSU will be amplified over time. And the library owns these, so there is even the potential for this to become a seed bank in the future.
The opportunity for the project to serve in this role came about, Matt McMahon, Snøhetta’s Project Director says, because the team realized early on that the remote setting would make it difficult to find nurseries with the right plants. They began to imagine a nursery tailored to genetically specific Badlands species.
McMahon notes that the seed collection has expanded to become a driving element — not just as an outcome but as part of the process of deep engagement for the team and the public. Public participation in Seed Collection Days was invited on numerous occasions. This effort also prompted engagement with private and public landowners who have ecologically intact grasslands that have species that the team wants to collect.
“Almost everyone on the design and owner core teams has spent time doing seed collection out in the Badland landscape,” McMahon says. “This connects us all to this project and place in a deep and personal way.”
There have been some interesting and inspiring ripple effects of this effort already. Thibaudeau explains: “We have started native plant restoration work and seed collection from our site and surrounding areas. One of our large benefactors is in the oil industry, and that team has become very excited about the reclamation work. They see potential for how this can translate to the oil field reclamation work beginning in many areas.” As in other arenas, the team aims to become a leader in grassland restoration, proving what can be done by projects with grassland sites. There is talk about finding a co-op partner for a native seed bank in the future.
Community and stakeholder engagement
As a practice, says Dykers, “Snøhetta brings an open process to our projects, listening to the land, local communities, and stakeholders to inform how design can be tailored to place. Our design process draws upon the stories people and places share, building ownership and consensus and excitement to the community that often emerges around a project.” This is essential to LBC’s Ecology of Place Petal where the Imperative for deep community engagement exists.
The team knew early on that engaging with the community and stakeholders for this project would be important. The owner brought three prospective design teams during the competition to connect with the land and the people of Medora, giving the community access to three finalist teams, setting the stage for continuous community engagement.
Delk describes this further: “This project is about connecting — connecting physically but also connecting to people.” This has played out in a number of ways. There is a Library Foundation storefront in downtown Medora to serve as a community-facing place where people could share their ideas. “We supplied the library with design materials to help people visiting the store engage in and understand the design, including a large physical model,” she says. “People can remove the roof and see how the site works and how it relates to its neighbors. They can also ask questions and share feedback.”
One of the Snøhetta team’s big moves was to connect tightly with adjacent neighbors and uses, including a restaurant and entertainment venue that have been in place for many years. Their design proposed knitting to those uses, and exploring “how do we share” rather than separating from them.
The library has hosted multiple public meals and engagement sessions. The design team continues to update the community on progress and engages with members of the public about various aspects. A tribal liaison was brought on board at the onset to help represent indigenous groups and engage with them and with the state. As Delk notes: “The owner and the entire team have understood from the start how important it is to make time and space for a range of interactions and feedback.”
“The team’s tireless efforts to connect the dots around recycling, including ongoing work with neighboring communities, may mean that by the time the project opens, the region’s recycling ecosystem will be far more robust than it is today.”
Materials: transparency, take-backs, and more
Thibaudeau notes that the team is “deeply engaged” in the supply chain. “If manufacturers don’t have EPDs, we’re asking them to secure them.” Christine says that the team has been working with several manufacturers to encourage take-back programs. “Many of these organizations have such programs in Europe, where shorter distances between building sites and their factories make this easier,” she says. “We’re asking them to think about how they can make this work here, even if their factories are several states away from our site.” More generally, she says, “The project is really urging manufacturers to be more transparent. Some have been very open. Others have pushed back and forfeited their opportunity to participate.”
Low-carbon concrete was another novelty for the area. The ready-mix team — Dickinson Ready Mix — was willing to be innovative and create mixes for this project, and “they’ve gotten national recognition” for this, Beaubien says. The concrete finisher, Winn Concrete, was hesitant at first, because they didn’t have experience with the mix. But they have been very pleased with how the concrete is turning out, she says.
The “hey, I know a guy” school of “Get It Done” is definitely in play on this project, as it is in so many LBC efforts. Beaubien and Carroll both talked about their work to make connections between businesses and individuals to help build the solutions that are needed. “We’re always looking for ways to fill the gaps,” Beaubien says. “We start talking about packaging and what to do with all the elements, and then we find out that ‘someone knows a guy’ who recycles palettes. That’s how the system comes together. In some cases, things won’t fully align for this job, but we will get the ball in motion so that they will be much smoother for the next one.”
Carroll points out that the team’s tireless efforts to connect the dots around recycling, including ongoing work with neighboring communities, may mean that by the time the project opens, the region’s recycling ecosystem will be far more robust than it is today.
Beaubien highlights that another outcome of this invaluable experience has been in establishing processes with the team and gaining a greater understanding of how LBC impacts the overall cost and value of a project. She notes that this will provide immeasurable value to clients considering sustainability certifications and to trade partners with concerns about how these projects will affect their work.
An important ripple effect of this building, the team expects, will be on the visitors themselves. “This landscape can be read,” McMahon says. “We see this as a place to build literacy about what a landscape is and how people can relate to it and exist within it.” Thibaudeau agrees: “We are connecting people to a place,” he says. “We want them to learn about land and stewardship from the place, and take that knowledge home and do something with it.”
Perhaps the longest-term ripple effect of all may be from the grasslands and the seed collection work, and how they play into biodiversity and species conservation.
Images © Plomp, courtesy Snøhetta and Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library
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