Walk through the obama presidential center park from north to south, and the campus begins to read like a neighborhood. A women’s garden gives way to a granite tower, then a courtyard lined with restaurants, a Chicago Public Library branch, a woodland path, a sledding hill, and a playground. Only one part of the site charges admission.
Most former U.S. presidents honour their terms with archival libraries. The Obama campus takes a different route. It treats the presidency as a starting point for public life, not a closed archive.
The obama presidential center park sits on about eight hectares within the South Side of Jackson Park. Tod Williams, co-founder of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, led the design with Interactive Design Architects, which served as associate architect. “It’s a story told by the building interpreted by the visiting audience,” Williams said. For him, the real test is how people use the site once it opens.
A campus built like a neighborhood
The tower gets most of the attention, and it earns it. The Museum rises about 69 metres, or 225 feet, over eight storeys and wears granite from a single quarry. Its neighbors are lower and quieter. The Forum and the library are single-storey buildings, each with a level below grade, and both carry plantings across their roofs.
The three structures connect through sunken planted courtyards and underground passages. The campus also sits within a wider plan for public life, with a woodland walk, a lagoon-view promenade, a sledding hill, and a playground.
The campus’s connected paths and courtyards echo how cities weave public spaces together, as seen in Thessaloniki’s plan linking 70 monuments citywide for a useful comparison.
Home Court, the athletics and activity center at the southern edge, was designed separately by Moody Nolan. Its gym and event spaces give the campus a use that has nothing to do with history or exhibits. Visitors can come for a workout, a meeting, or an afternoon in the park.
A park with a complicated past
The site also carries controversy. Frederick Law Olmsted designed Jackson Park in the late 19th century as a chicago public park, and the park hosted the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Many residents of the South Side neighborhood that surrounds it see the park as belonging to them. Building a presidential campus inside it raised hard questions from the start.
Evan Ripley, an architect and project manager who spent a decade on the project at Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, acknowledged the conflict. “I do think it’s appropriate that there was so much conflict with having this project in the park,” he said. The Cultural Landscape Foundation has raised concerns about the precedent the project sets for other parkland.
The design also reshaped the park in ways its defenders point to. The designers, at least, left their corner of the park better than they found it. Matthew Bird, a principal at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, which led the landscape work, pointed to a woodland viewing tower as his favorite spot on the site. “I think it’s the best view on the site,” he said.
Local concerns extend beyond the edges of the obama presidential center park. Many view the park as rightfully belonging to the low-income South Side district it sits in. Her question is whether an institution this large can work with the city rather than speak about its residents from a distance.
Stormwater management shaped much of the landscape plan. The site is engineered to hold runoff from a 100-year storm, which eases strain on an overwhelmed sewer system in a flood-prone area. Crews reused stones and trees removed during construction. Some trees were milled into logs placed around the park, and others were left as stumps to return soil and microorganisms to the ecosystem.
The Obama Foundation also built a new running track near 63rd Street to replace the one displaced by the campus. Across the obama presidential center park, trails, ball fields, and park access stayed largely open during construction.
Inside the tower at the obama presidential center park
The Museum’s most visible feature is the painted glass window on the north face. Julie Mehretu’s Uprising of the Sun lines the most prominent of the Museum’s few windows. The window interrupts the stone-grey facade with a burst of colour. From outside, the piece reads as stained glass. Inside, visitors ride escalators past it.
Entry to the Museum is the only ticketed section of the campus. The exhibition floors run across four levels and four galleries, tracing the nation’s founding ideals through the Obama presidency and into current civic debates.
The top floor opens into the Sky Room. Concrete letters, some 1.32 metres tall, form a screen that spells out lines from Obama’s 2015 “You Are America” speech. Visitors look out to Chicago through the words. Idris Khan’s Sky of Hope covers the ceiling with text from the same address.
Public art runs throughout the campus, both inside and out. Works by Julie Mehretu, Maya Lin, Richard Hunt, Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, Nick Cave, and Marie Watt appear along paths, in plazas, and in gardens. Most can be seen without a ticket.
If the outdoor seating and gathering areas here interest you, angled bench designs that foster social public spaces shows how small furniture choices can encourage people to linger without spending money.
Ralph Appelbaum Associates designed the exhibitions with a Chicago-rooted team. Community workshops led by Civic Projects Architecture shaped several choices, most visibly in an interactive exhibit called Imagine Your Impact. Aki Carpenter of Ralph Appelbaum Associates explained the approach. “We did not see community input and creative vision as opposing forces,” Carpenter said.
Names on the wall
In the Forum’s lower-level lobby, the Worker Appreciation Wall stretches 9.14 metres long and 1.83 metres high. It carries roughly 4,500 individual names of the people who built the campus. The wall gives the project’s workforce a permanent place in a building that many visitors will first read as a monument to one person.
Most of these buildings are privately funded and administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. The campus is called a center, and it is designed as an all-encompassing community hub.
The campus succeeds when a visitor forgets they came to see a president. A child on a swing, a jogger on the trail, and a reader in the library are all part of the story the site tells. The design asks its visitors to finish it.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Obama Presidential Center park charge admission?
Only one part of the Obama Presidential Center campus charges admission, and that is the Museum. Entry to the Museum is the only ticketed section of the campus, so the park and other areas are not ticketed.
How large is the Obama Presidential Center park?
The Obama Presidential Center park sits on about eight hectares within the South Side of Jackson Park. The park includes a woodland path, a sledding hill, and a playground.
What is Home Court at the Obama Presidential Center?
Home Court is the athletics and activity center at the southern edge of the campus, designed separately by Moody Nolan. Its gym and event spaces give the campus a use unrelated to history or exhibits, such as workouts or meetings.
How does the Obama Presidential Center handle stormwater?
The site is engineered to hold runoff from a 100-year storm. This eases strain on an overwhelmed sewer system in a flood-prone area.
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