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Peachtree Street is getting a bit of Brit.

John Wieland, founder of John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods, has commissioned London-born architect David Chipperfield to design 1 Museum Place, the mid-rise luxury condominum building directly across the street from the Woodruff Arts Center in Midtown.

JOEY IVANSCO/Staff (ENLARGE)
British architect David Chipperfield will design 1 Museum Place.
Christian Richters (ENLARGE)
Chipperfield's projects include the Museum of Modern Literature (above) in Marbach am Neckar, Germany, and the Housing Villaverde (below) in Madrid.
(ENLARGE)
Christian Richters (ENLARGE)
The Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, reveals David Chipperfield's modernist aesthetic.
Handout (ENLARGE)
The Des Moines Public Library, another Chipperfield project, opened in 2005.
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The $135 million project, scheduled to open in 2009, also will house a 15,000-square-foot gallery for contemporary art.

Wieland held an international competition this summer to choose the architect. Although Chipperfield and the other finalists — Diamond and Schmitt Architects, Toronto; Carlos Jimenez Studio, Houston; Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architects, Atlanta — submitted plans and models, there is no final design.

"We were not trying to pick a scheme," Wieland said. "We were trying to pick an architect. David was the most sensitive to the site and had the most passion for it."

Wieland, a former board president and key donor to the High Museum, says he wants this project to complement what may ultimately be an extension of the "village for the arts" on the other side of Peachtree Street. (He has offered the High Museum an option to buy the building's gallery space for $1 within 10 years of its opening.) A look-at-me building, therefore, was not a goal.

"We were looking for an architect who understood context," said Jack Wieland, his son, who is president of Wieland Commercial Group and who will be managing the project.

The complexity of that context, noted Chipperfield, who was in town to meet with his new client last week, is one of the challenges that attracted him to the job.

"It's a critical urban site," he said. "We will have to mediate between the cultural buildings across Peachtree Street and the residential Ansley Park behind it."

The quiet elegance of Chipperfield's modernist aesthetic, evident in work he has planned or completed in Europe, China and the United States, , ,.

His projects range from the entrance pavilion for Berlin's famed Museum Island, the first new structure on the island in 75 years, to a residential district of luxury apartments near Shanghai, to a hospitality center for the America's Cup yacht racing competition in Valencia, Spain.

Less well-known in the United States, the architect, 53, has completed the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, and the Des Moines Public Library, which opened in 2005. His addition to the St. Louis Art Museum is in the design stage.

Chipperfield will design the shell, gallery and public spaces of the new structure. John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods will plan the condominiums, the cost of which will be at the high end of the luxury market, estimated to start at $2 million.