WASHINGTON – The architects selected to design the most visible incarnation of President Bush’s legacy are no strangers to high profile and politically sensitive projects.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York City won the job in an announcement Tuesday, and its founding partner said that bringing together a learning center and a historical site at Southern Methodist University made the project especially appealing.

Stern architects are also no strangers to Maine.

A Stern design was chosen in 1996 for the 26,000-square-foot addition to the Bangor Public Library. Robert Stern supervised the Bangor job, designed by Alex Lamis, an associate at his firm. Stern took part in the groundbreaking for the $6.4 million addition and renovation of the 1912 library.

Tuesday’s announcement marks a major step in the likely development of the Bush library and museum at SMU, which believes it will result in a bonanza of benefits, from raising its profile nationally to making the campus a tourist destination.

“The president, if he were here, he’d say, ‘Eventually people will not be so interested in George W. Bush, but they will be interested in the ideas, the forums and debates and things that can occur,”‘ Stern said. “So I think he and I are on the absolute same wavelength in that respect

Stern, who also is dean of the Yale School of Architecture and has done several other projects in Dallas and across Texas, said he was still formulating his vision for a building that, based on the selection panel directive, must incorporate the “spirit” of Bush’s presidency.

“That’s the million, the billion-dollar question in these days,” he said. “We have to make a building that’s very open and welcoming to people that is at the same time dignified. We also want to make a building that is sympathetic to the wonderful architecture of the SMU campus and yet be its own building at the same time.”

The president and Laura Bush decided on Stern after meeting him Aug. 23 at their ranch in Crawford.

Despite the selection of an architect, the final call on building the library at SMU has not been made.

Although some faculty members have opposed having SMU host the president’s memorial, school leaders have moved aggressively to get it, relying on deep political, financial and social connections to Bush.