Last year Barack Obama chose Chicago, where he began his political career, as the site of the future Obama Presidential Center. That means yet another important building for a city that takes architecture seriously. But who will the President and First Lady choose to design the building that will embody their legacy? For years the front-runner was rumored to be David Adjaye, the Tanzanian-born, London- and New York–based architect who has become a friend of the Obamas. But the Obama Foundation cast its net wide, reviewing the qualifications of some 140 firms. Last week the foundation announced a shortlist of seven firms, which are expected to present ideas to the President and Mrs. Obama early next year. Here’s the field of seven, and what each might offer the Obamas.

Adjaye Associates

Adjaye is one of the few architects with extensive experience designing libraries, including two “Idea Stores” in London and a couple of remarkable branch libraries in Washington, D.C. His most visible project is the National Museum of African American History and Culture, nearing completion on the National Mall, less than half a mile from the White House. Another connection: Adjaye designed the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo; President Obama won the Peace Prize in 2009.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro

The designers of the recently opened Broad museum and the High Line are likely to propose a library building that stresses transparency—a hallmark of their work and an apt motif for a repository of presidential papers. And the firm, known as an early adopter of new technologies, is likely to propose ways to make the library experience accessible to anyone with a computer. The firm has a Chicago connection—it is designing the David M. Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago, and its founders, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, have won the “genius” award of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation.

John Ronan Architects

The only Chicagoan among the seven, John Ronan won acclaim for his design of the city’s Poetry Center, a two-story structure sheathed in oxidized-zinc panels with perforations that, Ronan says, “encourage public investigation” of the building and its gardens. He also designed the Gary Comer Youth Center, with a jazzy, colored-concrete façade, where the Obama Foundation held the press conference last May announcing its choice of Chicago as the site of the future library and museum. No wonder he’s on the Obamas’ radar.

Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Presidential libraries have large museum components, which gives Renzo Piano an advantage: Piano has designed some 25 museum buildings, including the Modern Wing of Chicago’s Art Institute. His most recent museum, New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, is widely considered a triumph, and Michelle Obama, who helped dedicate the building last April, must know that. Barack Obama has socialized with Piano, who, like David Adjaye, isn’t a U.S. citizen. That may not matter to a President who thinks globally.

SHoP Architects

Founded by five Columbia University architecture alumni, the firm is putting up striking buildings all around New York City. The widest may be the Barclays Center, the Corten steel Brooklyn arena; the tallest is almost certainly the 60-foot-wide, 1,400-foot-high tower planned for a site on West 57th Street. Winner of the 2009 National Design Award for Architecture Design (which brought the founders to the White House), the firm is known more for commercial and residential buildings than for libraries or museums.

Snøhetta

The Norway- and New York–based firm was recently chosen to oversee a major expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which will debut in May 2016. The firm is also known for the stunning Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo that visitors can climb on. Closer to home, the firm, headed in part by University of Texas–educated Craig Dykers, masterminded the redesign of Times Square to make it more pedestrian-friendly.

Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects

The firm is overdue for some good luck—its American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan was torn down in 2014 to make room for a significant MoMA expansion despite heated public outcry. But the husband-and-wife architects are known for their extraordinarily elegant work, primarily cultural and academic buildings. One of them, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, with its striking mix of forms and materials, is in walking distance of the Obamas’ former home. President Obama gave the couple the National Medal of Arts in 2013.