On a recent afternoon, an empty bottle of tequila lay on the grassy parkway opposite the new Obama Presidential Center, a bit of the real city across the street from the security-conscious construction site. But the bottle’s stubby proportions were oddly consistent with the unusually shaped 225-foot-tall granite-clad tower that will house the center’s primary exhibitions.
That tower and the two low-riding structures next to it are the work of New York-based Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA). The duo’s work, which includes the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, has been consistently thoughtful, serene and cerebral for four decades. While these are qualities that seem appropriate for Barack Obama, they’re everything that a construction site is not.
There are still a few months of construction to go, but there’s enough built work to merit a recent visit with Tod Williams to preview the project. A more complete evaluation will come when the center opens in 2026.
A broad plaza on the east side of South Stony Island Avenue at 60th Street is surrounded on three sides by the primary structures of the center’s campus: the museum tower, the forum and a new branch of the Chicago Public Library. While the tower rises the equivalent of a 22-story building, the forum and library tuck into new earthen berms that face Jackson Park to the east. The forum will host conferences and events that will facilitate the mission of the Obama Foundation. The library will be a branch of the Chicago Public Library, with a reading room that will feature books chosen by the Obamas.
But it’s the tower that will draw most visitors — and architectural attention. Mostly solid, the granite-clad concrete structure presents as a treasure or jewel box that hides and protects its contents. The old Chicago Academy of Sciences in Lincoln Park, since moved and rebranded as the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, was a classical Beaux Arts version of this architectural type. But the center’s tower doesn’t confirm to previous architectural conventions or styles. It’s quiet, yet startling, and while it’s essentially square in plan, its walls are canted and splayed with the overall volume nipped and tucked on every side. Despite its height, there are just four levels of exhibition space. The typical floors are 25 feet apart and provide exceptionally tall ceilings for the exhibits.
They’ll start placing 5-foot-tall letters along the upper reaches of the west and south facades soon. It will provide an excerpt from Obama’s speech on the 50th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery and will be one of the more distinctive elements in a tower that’s hardly conventional. We will know whether it succeeds as the installation is completed.
Already in place is an 83-foot-tall painted glass window titled “Uprising of the Sun” by Ethiopian American artist Julie Mehretu on the tower’s north face. Its bright colors and abstract designs were inspired by the same Obama speech that will be quoted on the south and west faces of the building. Visitors to the museum will traverse the exhibition floors via an escalator directly behind the window. Williams sees the piece as a hybrid of the traditional rose window in a church and graffiti art that’s reflected in the piece’s bold gestural strokes.
Another highlight will be the Sky Room on the tower’s uppermost floor that features broad windows facing south and west. A team of top-notch plasterers was finishing its canted ceiling on a recent afternoon to verbal acclaim by the architect. The views — primarily to the south and west — give new perspective on parts of the city where Obama started his career as a community organizer.
The variability of the tower’s exterior stone is apparent in changing light and weather conditions. It’s a gray New Hampshire granite that is distinctive and expressive. But it’s creating a rather moody building, which seems a bit at odds with the president it represents.
Installation of the museum’s exhibits, designed by the highly regarded New York-based Ralph Appelbaum Associates, is underway. There is something just a little bit bizarre about re-creating the Oval Office within a 22-story mostly windowless masonry tower. On a recent visit, the replica of the famed room sported a newly laid wood floor and awaited its wall and ceiling finishes.
The center’s opening date is still under wraps, but it will certainly be in 2026. It will debut during the nation’s semiquincentennial and provide a lot of contrast as we watch the actual White House become a gilded and overwrought McMansion.
Walking through the complex revealed consistently thoughtful and serene spaces that seem appropriate to the former president. But there’s still a lot that will only become apparent when the complex is complete.
The center’s tower poses a startling change of scale for the Woodlawn neighborhood, where the imposing classical mass of the Hyde Park Academy High School has been the big dog for more than a century. A widened South Stony Island Avenue is mostly complete; we will see how well it handles traffic when the complex is up and running.
Windowless and underground spaces pose enormous challenges for architects — and the Obama Presidential Center has a lot of them. The three buildings connect at the lower level, where natural light is provided through five distinct sunken courtyards. Final finishes and plantings will make or break the unusual strategy of burrowing large parts of the complex below grade.
From renderings and a viewing of uninstalled pieces on site, we can see some of the finished materials such as cast bronze panels that will clad one of the tower’s monumental interior stairs. The materials are stark, minimal and yet evocative. Williams and Billie Tsien have always excelled at careful attention to these and similar materials with subtle details. It’s not done yet, but it’s promising.
The exterior of the tower is still incomplete, with the text facing south and west still to be installed. How will the text “read”— both literally and metaphorically?
And art of vastly different scales will be a vital component of the center, inside and out. Most of these are still nascent and will await review when the complex opens.
The Obama Presidential Center promises to be a very un-Chicago building — quiet, spatially complex, and very much underground. It’s big and tall, but not very glassy nor dominated by the relentless grid that is this city. Its shape is intentionally unusual in a way that’s generally foreign to Chicago’s architecture. How it fits in to our considerable architectural history is a question for another day.
Because of the generally quiet and subtle nature of Williams and Tsien’s work, it’s perilous to judge the project’s overall success before it’s completed, but based on a recent visit, there’s much to like in the Obama Presidential Center’s still nascent form.
Edward Keegan writes, broadcasts and teaches on architectural subjects. Keegan’s biweekly architecture column is supported by a grant from former Tribune critic Blair Kamin, as administered by the not-for-profit Journalism Funding Partners. The Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.
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