You can feel it the moment you’re on the ground at the Obama Presidential Center: There is soul to this campus. Having followed this project closely for three years as a Chicagoan, and for even longer as a critic, I found that walking the site changed something for me. How the community uses it, moves through it and makes it theirs — those are always the true indicators of architecture that matters. “It’s a story told by the building interpreted by the visiting audience,” agrees Tod Williams, co-founder of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA), which led the design alongside Interactive Design Architects as the project’s associate architect.

In person, this destination extends far beyond a single building — even if most of the images circulating of it focus on one granite-wrapped obelisk-like structure. It’s really a shared eight-hectare backyard for all. As one walks from north to south, the campus unfolds like a neighbourhood. First, there is the Women’s Garden, followed by the aforementioned obelisk tower (the Museum), then a central courtyard beside the Forum building with restaurants on its lower level, and a Chicago Public Library branch. From the library, the surrounding plazas spill into a woodland walk, a lagoon-view promenade, a sledding hill, a community vegetable garden and kitchen, barbecue grills, a picnic area, a playground, and an athletic and activity center. (Called Home Court, this component was designed separately by Moody Nolan.)

Built within the South Side of Chicago’s Jackson Park, the Obama Presidential Center campus is anchored by an eight-storey granite tower (the Museum) complemented by the single-storey Forum and a library branch, plus abundant landscaping.

As generous as it is, the campus is also controversial. It is built within the 223.2-hectare Jackson Park, a historic public amenity designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (and host of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair) that many view as rightfully belonging to the low-income South Side district it sits in. “I do think it’s appropriate that there was so much conflict with having this project in the park because I don’t think we should do that lightly,” acknowledges Evan Ripley, an architect and project manager who spent a decade on this project at TWBTA. While groups like the Cultural Landscape Foundation have expressed fear about what type of precedent this sets, the designers here, at least, have left their corner of the park better than they found it. “There’s one little piece in the woodland walk where there’s a dense planting that opens up, and there’s a viewing tower. I think it’s the best view on the site,” says Matthew Bird, a principal at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, which led the project’s landscaping.

Bird explains that sustainability was treated as an environmental obligation as much as a social one. The site is engineered to manage stormwater from a 100-year storm, easing pressure on the overwhelmed sewer system in this flood-prone area. Stones and trees removed during construction were reworked into the grounds — the latter milled into playful logs scattered through the park or preserved as stumps, reintroducing soil and microorganisms to maintain the original ecology. Ahead of construction, the Obama Foundation rebuilt a new track near 63rd Street to replace the one displaced by the OPC while keeping trails, ball fields and park access largely intact throughout the build.

Organized orthogonally around the central plaza alongside the eight-storey, 68.6-metre-tall Museum tower, the Forum and the library are both single-storey structures (both with another level below grade) scaled to match the parkland, with greenery that extends right over their rooftops. All three structures are linked through a series of sunken planted courtyards and connected by underground passages, creating the feel of one seamless complex. The Museum and its neighbouring structures also share an underlying material: concrete clad in granite from the same quarry (albeit in two distinct finishes). But it is really the Museum that stands as the site’s defining landmark, with mountainous massing that features sharp, angular chips off its various blocks. The most prominent of the few windows is lined with a painted-glass work by artist Julie Mehretu, interrupting the stone-grey facade with a burst of colour but otherwise keeping the interior completely obscured. Up top, a giant typographic screen introduces another visual puzzle, its tightly clustered concrete words wrapping around a corner in a way that makes them all but impossible to read.

Rising in the museum’s entrance, an 11.6-metre-tall abstract map by Mark Bradford renders Chicago’s South Side in layers of recycled paper and found materials, with Jackson Park anchored at its centre.

Once inside, however, this inscrutable architecture reveals itself gradually through visitors’ experiences. People enter to the word HOPE arranged by artist Jack Pierson using found lettering from vintage signage — one of 28 artworks commissioned for the campus. On the north face, daylight pours in through Mehretu’s hand-painted glass — Uprising of the Sun. The only ticketed section of the whole campus begins here. The Museum’s exhibition floors unfold across four levels and four galleries, which trace the nation’s founding ideals through the Obama presidency and into present-day civic questions. Floor by floor, the story builds until it opens up entirely in the Nelson Mandela Sky Room, where visitors look out through those concrete letters, which transcribe Obama’s 2015 “You Are America” speech.

In the viewing room at the top of the Museum tower, visitors look out to Chicago through 1.32-metre-tall Pentagram-designed concrete letters that spell out lines from Obama’s “You Are America” speech. Idris Khan’s Sky of Hope decorates the ceiling above with text from the same address.

For the exhibition design, Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA) assembled a diverse, Chicago-rooted team — including Civic Projects Architecture, Normal Studio, and artists Amanda Williams, Andres L. Hernandez and Norman Teague. (Nearly half the exhibition design work was done by minority- and woman-owned local businesses.) Community engagement workshops (led by Civic Projects Architecture) shaped real design decisions — most visibly in “Imagine Your Impact,” an interactive exhibit that runs throughout the building and culminates in a large-scale digital artwork demonstrating how individual actions can join to create collective change. “We did not see community input and creative vision as opposing forces. For a project about democracy, public service and collective action, listening had to be part of the design process,” notes Aki Carpenter of RAA.

Located in the Forum’s lower-level lobby, the Worker Appreciation Wall, 9.14 metres long and 1.83 metres high, features approximately 4,500 individual names. It’s my favourite part of the project: a wall that highlights the collective effort required to realize this place, standing as the truest proof of architecture’s collaborative nature — of the people, by the people, and for the people. “Looking back, it’s accurate,” says TWBTA co-founder Tod Williams. “We created this program together with the President and we were finding our way along the path, and it was always done with that spirit.”