The Barack Obama Foundation today announced seven architectural firms that will compete to design the Barack Obama Presidential Center that include several foreign agencies and artists.

The Chicago Tribune featured brief profiles on those competing for “one of Chicago’s and the nation’s most sought-after commissions” slated for selection at either Washington Park or Jackson Park by mid-2016.

“The list released Monday includes four firms from New York, two in Europe and one in Chicago. The foundation said in September that 140 architectural firms from 25 countries and 60 cities applied to design the presidential center,” ABC News reports.

“The center … will be home to Obama’s archives and a museum about his presidency,” according to the site. “It is expected to be completed in 2020 or 2021.”

Design finalists include David Adjaye, head of Adjaye Associates, who has created “spatially inventive houses for London artists,” as well as the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. that’s expected to open next year.

The Tribune points out Adjaye, who ate dinner with President Obama during a 2012 state dinner for British Prime Minister, grew up in Ghana before moving to Britain in 1979. The news site opines that the “socially conscious character” of his designs and his “transnational background appear to mesh well with Obama, a former community organizer whose own multiethnic background includes being raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”

The Norway architectural firm Snohetta, now headquartered in New York, is also a frontrunner. The firm devised the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet along the waterfront in Oslo, the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, according to the Tribune.

The Italian architect Renzo Piano, who dined with Obama and other “Italian notables” in 2014, made the cut, as well. Piano, the “go-to architect for museums” recently designed the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing. He created the tallest building in London – a 1,000-foot tall pyramid called The Shard – and also designed the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan, which received high praise from Michelle Obama earlier this year.

‘“I fell in love with the building,” the first lady said. She even raved about the museum’s freight elevator,” the Tribune reports.

Aside from the foreign-based firms, there are a few American architects also still in the running. Diller Scofidio + Renfro – designers of a new Broad museum in Los Angeles and the planned expansion of the New York Museum of Modern Art – have a history working with the University of Chicago, which landed the winning bid for the Obama center. The firm is also designing the Rubenstein Forum for the University a few blocks from the potential Jackson Park site.

John Ronan Architects made the Obama Foundation’s short list, too.

Ronan is a Grand Rapids, Michigan native who has won multiple honors from the American Institute of Architects for projects in Chicago: “one for the elegant Poetry Foundation headquarters in River North, the other for the Gary Comer Youth Center, a brightly colored community center in the South Side’s Greater Grand Crossing Neighborhood,” the Tribune reports.

The “fast-rising” New York firm SHoP Architects – designers of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn that hosts the Brooklyn Nets and New York Islanders – also remain in the running, as does Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, designers of the Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago.

The former was praised by Obama Foundation architecture consultant Paul Goldberger as designing a “decent and at times strong building” with the Barclays Center, while the latter was awarded a 2013 National Medal of Arts by the president, according to the news site.