Books & the Arts / Where Hope Has a Gift Shop The nostalgic architecture of the Obama Presidential Center The Nostalgic Architecture of the Obama Presidential Center Where hope even has a gift shop. The Obama Presidential Center. We are in part of what’s called the Forum, a section of the Obama Presidential Center that is open to the public. They were Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the husband-and-wife founders of the architecture firm TWBTA, who won the commission to design the Obama Presidential Center in 2016. An Obama Center official then interjected to say that Mark Hamill himself had come to tour the tower with Obama.