Obama Center engineer fires back at online critics ripping architecture as ‘monstrous insult’
CHICAGO — One of the people who helped design the towering building Barack Obama The Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side told Fox News Digital that courage was the 44th president’s goal in building what became a polarizing finished product.
“The architects knew with the client that they wanted to do something bold at the top of the tower, and the vision for the pitch came to life,” Washington, D.C.-based structural engineer Chris Bird told Fox News Digital just before the site opened to the public on Friday.
Bird specifically designed the upper quadrant of the tower, incorporating quotes from various speeches Obama gave during his two terms in office. The 91 words wrap around one corner of the building, creating a look that is both unique and unique. praised and mocked. There are 433 individual letters, each about 1.5 meters high, Bird said.
The Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago (L) and structural engineer Chris Bird, who helped design the building, on June 19, 2026.
(Fox News)
“Working with design architects, as well as graphic designers, to understand how to shape and move and combine and place a conversation into a building is truly unprecedented,” Bird said. “There is no architectural precedent in my lifetime” idea“
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Fox News Digital spoke with more than a dozen people who packed the 19.3-acre campus during its public opening Friday, using words like “extraordinary,” “breathtaking,” “astonishing,” “futuristic” and “unique” to describe the center’s design.
The center was praised by online critics as “terrible insult to architecture, a “concrete nightmare” and a “monstrosity“
The Obama Presidential Center is shown with the Eleanor Roosevelt Fruit and Vegetable Garden in the foreground.
However, Bird is happy with the result and does not mind the criticism.
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“Now that it’s done, it feels like it’s really set in stone this site and this neighborhood” he said. “You know, he can adapt to the park very nicely. I mean, landscape architecture – like buildings – landscape architectures are incredible, too.”
He said it evoked emotion in the people he met during the opening festivities.
“I mean, it’s nothing but smiles and some tears sometimes. I think everyone finds a piece of themselves here that they may or may not know they need, which is really special,” she said.
Barack Obama speaks during the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Illinois.
Bird strongly disagrees with the description of the building as a “monstrosity.”
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“So the tower itself is an incredible gesture to the rest of the park,” he said. “We’re reaching towards the sky, it’s high but not too high, so in terms of size it’s about the same size as most of the buildings in this area.”
“I think it’s wrong to say this is an atrocity. I would say it’s a really grand gesture and a bold statement.”
Original article source: Obama Center engineer fires back at online critics who call architecture ‘monstrous affront’
