Obama Presidential Library nears opening as $850 million center

The obama presidential library is about to open on Chicago’s south side as an $850 million complex that rises 70 metres and sits on a 19-acre campus. Billie Tsien said Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects won the design competition in 2016 and shaped the building as a beacon.

The project places the former president’s library in a low-income area of the city, where the mostly windowless structure towers over the neighborhood. The design has also drawn comparisons to a menacing sci-fi headquarters, a flak tower and a Klingon prison.

Billie Tsien and Obama

Tsien said, “We had the idea of a beacon.” She also said, “We thought of four hands coming together,” and added, “The president was very, very hands on with the design,” while noting, “He talked a lot about his love of Brâncuși.”

The architect’s account shows the center was built as more than a museum or archive. It was shaped with Barack Obama involved directly in the design process, according to Tsien, after the firm won the competition in 2016.

Chicago South Side Opening

The size is the first thing readers will notice: 70 metres of largely closed-off exterior on a 19-acre campus, with a price tag of $850 million. That scale sets the center apart from smaller libraries and makes its opening a visible addition to the south side skyline.

The project also sits inside the longer tradition of presidential libraries, which began in 1940 when Franklin D Roosevelt built a library in Dutch colonial style alongside his grave in upstate New York. The Obama Presidential Center follows that tradition but does so with a far larger footprint and a more fortress-like profile.

For Chicago residents near the campus, the opening means the building is no longer an idea on paper or a construction project. It becomes a finished public presence in a neighborhood where its size, cost and shape have already made it hard to ignore.