Former President Barack Obama reportedly pushed to make his Chicago-based presidential center far beyond his original vision, which made at least one of its architects “uneasy.” Obama’s demands made the architect “uneasy,” adding more complications to the planned $850 million Obama Presidential Center, a mammoth, granite-clad complex in Jackson Park in Chicago, Illinois.
Tod Williams, one of the architects, said that Obama urged designers to “up our ante” from the presidential center’s earliest designs. The push for increasing the scale of the presidential center created tension, he said. “He was saying we should up our ante,” Williams told the New Yorker. He added that the continued pressure to up the scale made him uneasy. “Another time, he drew on one of my drawings, made a strong mark, which indicated that he didn’t think I was being bold enough. Those little things sting. But they also moved everything forward,” Williams continued.
