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So, the Obama Presidential Library Is Really Ugly
A discarded Chinese take-out box. The backside of a Star Wars sand crawler. The Washington Monument with the interesting bits lopped off. That’s what sprung to mind when confronted with the initial design of the Obama Presidential Center.
In addition to the tall stone museum with notches and windows cut out at random, the proposal calls for a low-slung forum and library with greenery on the roof. It will be built in Jackson Park in Chicago’s South Side, not far from the Museum of Science and Industry.
According to the Obama Foundation, this will be much more than a mere presidential library. “Through participatory and immersive experiences,” the website says, “the Center will tell Barack and Michelle Obama’s story, while lifting the hood on the mechanics of change and inspiring visitors to spark their own.”
No, I don’t know what that means either.
But the Obamas are going to use it as a community organizing bootcamp to teach new generations how to make hyperviolent Chicago an even less comfortable place to live and work.
As far as the architecture goes, I’m confused about the intent. Their first mistake was choosing Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the duo responsible for turning the light, modernist Phoenix Art Museum into a turgid eyesore that grumbles “keep out” to passers-by. If I had to identify an architectural antecedent to their Obama design, it would be the broken necropolis built two millennia ago in the Kingdom of Kush.
To be fair, modern presidential libraries are pretty bland affairs. George W. Bush‘s complex looks like the headquarters of a mid-market insurance company while Bill Clinton‘s is a double-wide about to tip into the Arkansas River. The only winner is the Reagan Library, but that owes more to siting than architecture.
What are your thoughts: Is the Obama Center a hit or a bust?
Published in General
Makes modern Soviet architecture look good.
This is an oxymoron, right?
I mean I know things are bad but we haven’t actually pulled the Soviets off of the ash heap of history yet. I hope.
Artists (including architects) have a looser definition of “modern” than the rest of us do.
Yump. No luck here either, and I’m a master of the ungainly trope.
I drifted off into an examination of the pathology of the thing. Strongly suspect it started out in late afternoon as a naive “draws back the curtain on the back-stage doings of yumpata, yumpata” but lightning quick made the author pull up shy at the suggestion of play-acting and theatrical intrigue. Perhaps maneuvering the horse into a bog of Tristan Tzara on a particularly dull and charmless day (it’s no Poem for a Dress with its “He halts the wheels of automobiles/ And the vertiginous gyroscope of the human heart.” after all) sounded like a safer bet. At which point the author is left with the image of hood up, broken down at the side of the road on a hot day’s twilight, surrounded by yokels and yahoos, who have day jobs comforting Job, scratching their back parts and confidently opining as to the cause of the mechanical mishap. Probably not what you want to lead with at the yearly review, but vivid–I know the car is beige, the problem is a radiator hose, and that the comforters of Job are Eliphaz, Bildad, and Jophar–and just somehow apt. Quitting time comes and you utter every writers favorite phrase: “oh, to hell with it,” or possibly “we’ll fix it in post.” But the editor screws the pooch and there you are.
Still an improvement on the Clinton Massage Parlor Double-Wide
Will it have bookshelves?
Or just a few copies of his books on the floor?
What a waste of space, in Chicago, in America, in our history. But record it, unlike the antifa’s.
You asked about my feelings on the Obama Center?
Well, some people just can’t help themselves……