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TThe Egyptians had their pyramids. The Anglo-Saxons had their balloons. And Americans have their own presidential libraries – the main difference is that the most revered leaders of the US are often still alive at the inauguration.
In the absence of a royal family or a state religion, the president of the United States has come to fill this space, and it has turned over the years into a cult of humanity, with its own temples of these powerful men. The latest pharaonic building is about to open on the south side of Chicago, where it looks like the sky. for the 44th President, Barack Obama. He may seem modest in office, but in his post-presidential, Netflix-creating post-life, Obama has built the biggest, most expensive and most daring mansion of them all. Behold the $850m Obamalisk – or, as it is sometimes pronounced, the Obamausoleum.
The libraries of past presidents have created many types, reflecting their creations. Franklin D Roosevelt started the tradition in 1940, building a library in the Dutch colonial style Near his grave in upstate New York, where he expected there would be “an alarming number of spectators”. Since then, each president has pursued his own immortality, dreaming of ever-expanding museums and galleries, serving as pilgrimage shrines. Lyndon B. Johnson sent a brutal team to Austin, Texasa fitting symbol, his architect Gordon Bunshaft said, “a stubborn man … a great man”. Ronald Reagan chose a expansion of the California haciendaand a dedicated hangar for Air Force One, when Bill Clinton built a cantilevered metallic box in Arkansas – the literal interpretation of his promise to “build a bridge to the 21st century”.
So, how do you demonstrate hope, justice, equality and the rest of Obama’s meteoric rise to the White House? How can you remember the first black president in history, who had such a revolutionary faith, at a time when many of his achievements are constantly being recalled?
“We had the idea of a beacon,” says architect Billie Tsien, whose practice, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, won the competition to design the Obama Presidential Center in 2016on the eve of Trump’s first presidency. “We thought of four hands coming together,” he adds, holding his hands in his partner’s, as if shielding the flame from the wind.
Above us, precious granite walls erupt from the bottom of the steep slope, before being cut to form a 70-meter-high barrier monolith. It looks carved and broken, above the 19-acre campus like a curved, curved stone. Rising above the low-rise, low-income, the building has an eerie, high-rise windowless look reminiscent of a sci-fi horror headquarters, with tiny openings that suggest drones could be launched, or lasers fired. Some have compared it to a flak tower, some to a “Klingon prison”. If it is a beacon of hope, it seems that it is one that has been strengthened in spite of the current regime, a place of protection to protect its fragile values from being surrounded.
“The president was very much in tune with the structure,” says Tsien, with a grim air. “He spoke a lot about his love for Brâncuși.” That is a Romanian sculptor who was known for his sculptures, which are not very visible. “And they wanted things to be complex and expensive.” Creating an interface, and then trying to access its contents, is very different from how we’ve worked before.
Obama had said he wanted to be an architect, before choosing to go into law, and he relished the opportunity to use his chisel. Tsien admitted: “When you have a client who says that, you’re kind of uncomfortable. “It usually means they had big ideas, and they had big ideas. But he was a very good critic.” He added that the Obama Foundation, which oversees the center, “wanted a ‘common sense’ that wasn’t the way we used to work. His face falls when we meet 3D printed plastic models of the house for sale in the gift shopat a cost of $40. However, the customer got what he wanted: this unforgettable menhir will never go wrong with anything else on your wardrobe.
In the search for an image, inspiration also came from a rock that Tsien and Williams found on a trip to Ethiopia, of the same shape as the house, with letters engraved on it. Considering that Obama was one of the best presidential orators since Lincoln, it only seemed fitting to wrap up the front with his speech. Lines, starting with his speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery, are now forming A sunshade above the southwest corner of the tower. “YOU ARE AMERICA,” you can tell clearly, before the words dissolve into an uncountable sea of letters. “I don’t know why it’s in Latin,” a confused resident told me. The lorem ipsum vibes are real.
The tower is the most spectacular part of four large buildings, built of gray granite, copper trim and a concrete interior, which lends the place a funereal air. There is a “court”, an auditorium, a gift shop, a cafe and a restaurant (where you can order Obama’s burger or Michelle’s family chili), and a branch of the Chicago Public Library, which has a reading room for the president of Obama’s favorite books, where you can sit in his favorite places. Hans Wegner reads the chair.
In some cases, Obamamania gets a little too much – there are even Obama tulips in the garden, a gift from the Dutch. Many painting commissions they help offset the gray, from Mark Bradford’s chaotic map of Chicago in the atrium, to Julie Mehretu’s glass window, which looks out from the north at night.
These buildings build a beautiful granite landscape on one side, while behind them is a static landscape – made of Michael Van Valkenburg Associates – who climb their roofs, including fruit and vegetable planters inspired by Michelle’s garden at the White House. To the south, past the well-equipped playground, sledging hill and large bowl-shaped lawn, is Home Courta gleaming aluminum-clad sports pavilion designed by Moody Nolan, the largest American sports pavilion in the US. It has an NBA-spec basketball court, written with Obama’s inspiring ideas, such as “Yes we can,” and “No one does great things alone” – a motto that the foundation stood for when bringing another architect to the stadium, while Williams and Tsien’s plan was too expensive, without any happy results. The angular metal seems to be cheap, but hopefully it will be beneficial to the community.
It faces the sledging hill, which originally housed archives, until it was thought that this would be the first presidential library that wasn’t a library. (This may be why its title is the Obama Presidential Center.) To the dismay of some historians, Obama is the first digital presidential archive, managed not by the National Archives, but by his private foundation, raising concerns about its purpose. Where there used to be lots, there are now 400 parking spaces (even though Obama is raising public transportation, this is still the US).
Physical records may not be available at the site, but those who say they want to transform the presidential library from a place for scholarly research to a place full of community events have an incredible ambition. “We didn’t build (the place) to celebrate my ability to bring about change,” Obama makes the announcement in a promotional video. “We did it to open yours.” It is not just a library, but a “campus dedicated to helping future revolutionaries”.
The transformation, he hopes, will take place inside the mysterious tower in which, for $ 30 a ticket, visitors are transferred through four floors of Obamarama events – standing. Made up Ralph Appelbaum Associatesis an action-packed account of the family’s life history, from the civil rights movements they inspired, their political careers, their achievements in office, life in the White House, and how you too can help “bring change home” (the slogan written on the gift bag).
There is also an Oval Office exercise, Pre-Trump’s Home Depot gildingwhere you can stand in the selfie line at the Resolute desk. Some of the highlights include campaign memorabilia, from badges to Air Jordans, and dollhouse dioramas of various White House rooms — an interesting combination, granted. The damage to the building continues. In the pre-show days, there were a lot of muscle boxes.
The elevator at the end takes you past the secret president’s panel to the “the upper room” at the top of the tower, where clear windows screen the city, under a white pyramid-shaped roof—the pharaoh’s chamber! artist Idris Khan’s blue voice is falling from the sky. But, very wrongly, the pyramid does not reach its peak in the sky, but a solid ceiling of plaster – perhaps an unexpected metaphor for the obstacles that must be overcome.
From this lofty eyrie, looking up at the large concrete letters, you get a good sense of how the Obama Center fits into its neighborhood, and why it has become so controversial. Below is Jackson Park, which was founded in 1871 by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York’s Central Park, part of which was given to the president. The idea of building a public park it led to serious crimesbut the foundation insists that the project has led to the creation of more parks and more trees, due to the removal of the road. However, the symbolic land grab struck a chord, with many vacant lots nearby.
