Obamas unveil design of presidential center

CHICAGO — Former first couple Barack and Michelle Obama on Wednesday offered the first look at the design of the planned Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park — a campus of three buildings highlighted by an eye-catching museum, whose height and splaying walls would make a bold architectural statement.

The museum, which will house exhibition space as well as education and meeting rooms, will be the tallest of the three structures, will be clad in a light-colored stone and will serve as a “lantern” for the complex, though a news release did not specify its height.

To its south would be the forum, which will house an auditorium, restaurant and public garden, and the library, which will contain a trove of documents, emails, photos and artifacts from Obama’s eight years in office.

Pathways will allow visitors to walk from the park to landscaped roofs above the library and forum, which would each be one-story tall. From the roofs, there will be views of Lake Michigan, the Jackson Park lagoon and an outdoor plaza that would connect the three buildings.

The existing athletic field and track will be moved just south, according to the renderings.

The Obama Foundation, the nonprofit in charge of building the center, is touting the building as “a working center for civic engagement and a place to inspire people and communities to create change.”

Initial reaction from one park advocacy organization was positive. “It incorporates the best of the outdoors and the best of the indoors,” said Louise McCurry, president of the Jackson Park Advisory Council. “There’s lots of green space, lots of grass and room for kids to run and to play.”