Clinton library design honored

The architects who designed Bill Clinton’s presidential library, a gleaming glass-and-steel building over the Arkansas River that invokes his administration’s theme of “building a bridge to the 21st century,” has won a National Design Award for excellence in architecture.

Polshek Partnership Architects of New York, whose projects include Carnegie’s newest concert hall and the planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, was one of two winners in the architecture design category for the prizes, awarded Tuesday by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Architect Rick Joy, currently working on a resort in Utah and several residential projects in the Southwest, also received an architecture award.

“Architecture has a responsibility somewhat greater than making beautiful form -- it has to make beautiful form that has some lasting meaning,” company founder James Polshek said.