PhD Candidate Mohadeseh (Hosna) Salari Sardari recently published a review of the newly opened Obama Presidential Center in Chicago for the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute. Her article, The Castle in Chicago: The Obama Presidential Center and the Architecture of Power questions whether the architectural design of the center and its intentions as a welcoming space for community to gather was successfully achieved. 

Hosna writes “The Obama Center departs from the modernist emphasis on transparency and civic openness, as well as from the Chicago tradition of human-scaled democratic architecture. Instead, it borrows the language of sculpture and monument, achieving presence at the cost of belonging. The result is a contradiction between architectural language and democratic ideals.”

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Image: Obama Presidential Center, south elevation, opening day. Photo: AlphaBeta135 via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0