Chapo Trap House - 1043 - The Obamalisk feat. Kate Wagner (6/8/26)

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

McMansion Hell writer and architecture critic Kate Wagner joins us for an early review of the Obama Presidential Center. We talk about its design, its architecture, its cloying message of “HOPE” that feels like Ludovico conditioning, and what it means as a final, definitive end of the Obama era and the Long 2010s. Check out McMansion Hell: https://mcmansionhell.com/ Follow Kate Wagner on X: https://x.com/mcmansionhell?lang=en And Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/katewagner.wehwalt.net

Okay. Greetings, friends. It's Monday, June 8th, and we've got some choppo for you. On today's episode, we will be talking about buildings. And in fact, one specific building in particular that's new to the community of buildings in America. That's right. We're discussing about soon to be open to the public on Chicago's south side, the Obama Presidential Library. And joining us to discuss this wonderful new building is, the architecture critic for the nation and the author of the blog, Mick Mansion Hell. You might know her as Mick Mansion Hell, but she also goes by Kate Wagner. Kate, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

Kate, we wanted to have you on because, yes, the Obama Presidential Library is opening in the south side of Chicago in but a few weeks. You have been lucky enough to have been granted access inside behind the veil of this sacred building and institution. And I would just like to begin with, like, your perspective as someone who studies architecture, who is very familiar with it, I'm just going to say right off the bat that even by the standards of presidential libraries, the Obama building is one of the most evil-looking structures I think I've ever seen. Yeah, it's definitely. For a long time, that record was held by Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential library, which is like a brutalist.

I don't even know how to describe it. it is just like a hulking kind of windowless, strange library. I was going to compare the Obama Library to the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential library at the University of Texas because it's the only presidential library I've been to. And speaking for myself, I thought I kind of liked the building. And I think it's actually like a really excellent museum as well. Yeah, I think that's a great building when the Lyndon B. Johnson one. When it was built, it was so funny.

There was an architecture critic Charles Jenks who called it a malapropism. too tall, too wide, too narrow, somehow got everything wrong. And it's funny how, like, we read it. Well, it was a, it was a tribute to the, the former president's famous genitals, his famously large genitals. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, too big, too wide. Yeah, Linda B. Johnson, he was thought of as sort of like the Brian Pumper of his day.

Absolutely. If you read Robert Carrow's books, he actually, the way he. beat Koch Stevenson segregationists. Like they say it's all the election, but Johnson was famous for just driving around Johnson County, Texas, the seat of his power. And on an 8mm camera, recording himself cracking eggs on women's heads.

And he actually invented the bag dance. And there's actually Robert Carroll, a lot of people think Robert Carrow is done, but he's actually writing the follow-up to the Linge. He's writing the years of Brian Pump. because Brian Palmer is actually a descendant, Lyndon Johnson. Okay, before we get into these specifics of what's being called the Obama-Lisk,

I'm wondering, like, could you provide from the perspective on both architecturally, politically, culturally, the role of the presidential library in American life? Or like, how did this begin? Like, how did this standard get set where as soon as you leave office, you have to like break ground on what will essentially be, I guess, like, on its face, something to house your public records for future historians like to archive for the public record your presidency but also essentially let's be honest to create like a living monument to how good a president you are in museum form yeah so actually

the very first presidential library was for frank in d roosevelt who was maybe the only good president and even he was a mixed bag so uh he was the first one to no no no a blinkin love over here where's his library no um and this is kind of a a fun building, the one that he put up, it's like a new, what we call like new formalism, which is a sort of mid-century and like earlier attempt to kind of make a stately columned building, like the Kennedy Center, for example, his new formalist building. And it was designed by Louis Simon, who is like a kind of minor architectural figure from the 1930s and 40s. And so anyways, like ever since then, you know,

it's been, you know, architecturally, the presidential libraries tend to be really conservative, actually. If you look through, there's like a page, if you can look through all of them, the ones that are, you know, the most progressive actually are sort of the more progressive presidents. So like Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, both of those are like very stark late modern buildings. But a lot of them are actually just, they look kind of like golf courses, to be honest with you. Or they look like mausoleums in a way. Or they kind of mimic the White House. And so, yeah, there's the, for example, George W. Bush's library was done by Robert Amstern,

who is this notoriously conservative postmodern architect. And it literally just looks, it's again, those four columns, and it just kind of looks like a modern version of a Georgian house. The ugliest one is the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, which is like, it literally looks like a funeral home, like from 1990. appropriate. Yeah. Oh, for sure. So, well, you mentioned like that there is a, there's a connection between the sort of political ideology of the president and how modern or progressive the architecture of their building is. So like, that would certainly

seem to be holding true with Obama, who sort of is like, you know, probably maybe the most progressive president of my lifetime. But like, the architecture is, it's, there I say, futuristic, but futuristic in the sense of a building you would see in. like a dystopian science fiction film that like houses the central command of the robot overlords or I don't know Darth Vader or something like that yeah it's it's kind of a funny project it's not the first tomb like presidential library we mentioned the Lyndon B Johnson Library which also has a certain tomb Geneseecois to it

with that one's by Gordon Bunchap who did the Hirschor Museum in DC if you know that one but anyway so the Obama's choice of architects is really kind of interesting because it's very, it's a very Obama choice. You know, how Obama is always trying to present himself as like sort of being like, like, like, woke and hip. You know, like, he's like, oh, I read the New Yorker type guy, like, kind of middlebrow, but like, like, elev tries to make it more elevated, you know, when in the museum, they have like, like, like, pictures of like his sneakers and shit like that. He's like, he cares extremely, he cares so much about being cool and picking like the right

thing, even though the inside of the museum is deeply uncool. But he picked this, this pair of architects. They were a married couple, TWBTA, which is Todd Williams and Billy Sen. And they are known for doing very, very stark, very highly detailed work, especially with Stone. So, like, they did the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. And so a couple, a number of other buildings. I did a lot of university buildings, but they are known for their use of like heavy stone

and exceptional detailing and kind of a moody interiors. And so they're kind of in the middle of the rank of architects. Like when this project was proposed, when I was still in college, like I wasn't an architecture critic, I was still a music major like in North Carolina when all of this was happening. And so like the architects they were trying to choose from all, they were all very famous.

And in a lot of ways, this is one of the very last buildings from a certain period of architecture that is like economically unfeasible now then we can talk maybe about that later but and some of the some of the architects involved were you know Renzo Piano who did the Whitney Museum

or you know Dillarsco Fidio and Renfou who did the shed at Hudson Yards the foreskin as we call it two other buildings I fucking can't stand I know evil build like any I hate the Whitney I hate the shed

So, yeah, like, this is very much of a piece, you know. For sure. What you said about, like, Obama's middle brownness, he would be, like, 100% if he was born just like 20 or 30 years later than he actually was. He would be a video essay. Yes. He would be making the shittiest videos about, like, why you don't understand killing Eve. Yeah.

No, absolutely. Yeah. Or he would be a sneaker podcaster. That's actually would be pretty cool. He would, he'd be like Adam 22. That would be actually pretty, he could have been a good person. He would have been on like the menswear guy blog or something. Yeah. Throwing fits.

Yeah, yeah. I was going to say perfect throwing fits guest. But Kate, you mentioned like when this project was, but a gleam in the eye of Obama, you were still in college. I mean, obviously these things, these things take a very, long time. And the location here matters as well, because Obama's a guy whose political career is very much

affiliated with Chicago and the south side of Chicago, just like Mr. Felix Beinerman over here. But like, could you describe, like, how this project came together and the relationship between Obama and his giant stone, his giant tombstone

of hope and change? Yeah. Like, how that had, like, how that project came together and, like, how it has sort of, I don't know, like, conflict with or taking advantage of. I mean, like, this is, this is essentially based on the privatization of a public park into Chicago. Yeah, exactly. So the project was built on Jackson Park.

And so technically the Obama Foundation, which is the proprietor of the Obama Presidential Center, which is not a library, by the way. It's not a library at all. And we can maybe get into that. There's no books. No, no mangoes. No, no mangos, dog. What?

Illiterate presidential. No, and so the selection for this, for the, there was an open call for proposals and Obama picked these architects, Todd Williams, Billy Sand. They're kind of, but they're known for these kinds of medium scale buildings, like small to medium scale buildings. And this is a classic problem in architecture where you have a studio that is extremely talented at doing a small and median scale buildings, forced to do a building that is way beyond their scale with like extremely devastating. consequences. But at the time, there was an open competition. There was a huge process of litigation in terms of like, can they use the park? Like they, you know, there was a huge uproar about the center being built on a public park. And so the Obama Foundation made several concessions to the, to the neighborhood and to the city. For example, it's not just the museum. They have a

public forum that people can ostensibly use. Like, ostensibly, the grounds are open to the public for like chilling and hanging out. Ostensibly, they're, you know, they have a, they have a nice playground. Actually, the rest of the campus, aside from the Obama list, it's like actually pretty pleasant. They have a nice playground that they put in and there's a basketball court that's like kind of a go, but, you know, whatever, it's hard to make a basketball court that looks good. And then they have a, the forum, which is a nice building.

and they have a library that is not the presidential library that is just a branch of the Chicago Public Library and there's an Obama reading room where you can read all of their books in that library. You can't check them out though. They have to stay there. Just Obama's books? It's Obama's books and the First Lady's book.

I think she has some book. And I looked around. It's like his advisors and their books and then like books that they were reading. So, you know, lots of hope and change core. You know, they got a big copy of To Kill a Mockingbird in there. And it's like, oh, I'm sure. And how have, how? How are the people of the south side of Chicago?

Like what has been their relationship to the Obama list and the Obama's in general? Yeah, this is a really mixed. This is a kind of complex relationship, I would say. Of course, there was, like I said, a huge public outroar of the privatization of a park. And especially Jackson Park, which was designed by the most, like the Franklin Wright of landscape architecture, which is Frederick Law Olmsted. And it was a very- Central Park famously.

Yeah. Yeah, famously. And so, you know, there was a huge, lots of people were upset about this. And then there was like a fight to move it to this other park called Washington Park. And that fight was that lost. There was a huge lawsuit that went on. Like, I think the presidential center was already under construction while the lawsuit was still going on. And they lost the lawsuit.

I think it's friends of Jackson Park was the plaintiff there. And so, yeah, the big issue actually. I had an Uber driver take me to the presidential center both ways because it's like far as fuck from my house. It's like on the other side of the city. And it was interesting. Both of them were from the south side and I talked to them about what they thought about it. And the one said like one said like this is bullshit because like they're charging admission to get into the center. And like we all live there is what he said and like we should just be able to go. The museum charges admission. And then the other guy was like, my rent's going up, basically. He said, yeah,

my landlord loves this building is what he said. And there's actually a huge, this is actually a huge problem. Like, Airbnbs are exploding around the Obama presidential center. And, you know, like there have been multiple news articles and like NPR, WBEC, which is our local NPR and like block club, about tenants on the south side near the Obama Center seeing their rents. They're basically getting renevicted where they like, you know, their leases are not renewed. Like they renovate the apartments and then they lease them at a higher rate. And there's no law in Chicago that keeps this from happening actually, which is pretty devastating. Well, yeah, like, but like, doesn't this all speak to like as a physical representation, like, as a, as a space designed to house the legacy

of Barack Obama's two terms in the White House and what he has meant with his legacy and what he means in American culture? Isn't this all very fitting that we just think of, like gentrifying a part of the south side, raising rents, and creating, as you described it literally like, the building itself looks like a tombstone. It looks like, it looks like a grave of some kind, but everything is sort of stamped with the hope and change branding. And it's just like, this is the cemetery of American hope and change because like that to me really is what the Obama years represented. Yeah, it's amazing when you listen to. the speakers from the Obama Foundation, which we can go into in a second. I have the transcripts, and

just like there's so many gems in there that we can go through. But they always are talking about economic investment in the South Side. And it's like, oh, yeah, I'm sure you are economically investing in the South Side to the detriment of everyone who lives there. And what's really interesting is that, you know, you mentioned a tune. Like, I'm writing my article for the nation now. It's in print, so it won't go out until like August or September, which, you know, which is unfortunate for the hot take economy, but fortunate for me that I can like think about it for longer. But I'm thinking of titling it like a scene a taff for neoliberalism. Yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like there's a lot of stuff in there, but it's actually really empty. You know? It's like, yeah, this giant kind of empty obelisk. And I want to talk about, because, you know, I remember at the Lyndon Johnson Museum, like, obviously these are designed, like you have to sort of understand going in

that these are always going to be like Hey geographic portraits of the president that they represent, right? Absolutely. You go to the Lyndon Johnson presidential library and like a lot of the videos about his term in office. Like, you know, they can't just ignore Vietnam.

But like in, you know, you got Doris Kern's Goodwin's talking to you. And like the narrative in the Johnson Museum is that the Vietnam War was such a tragedy. and it's so tragic that it ruined his presidency despite all of his other great accomplishments like the Civil Rights Act. But it's like to set it up in terms of tragedy

and not just like the evil of the Vietnam War and the evil of Lyndon Johnson for getting us involved in that is sort of you gotta take it. You got to sort of like understand that going in. So you mentioned some of the videos, but I'd like to start from the outside. As someone who is very, you know,

as an architectural critic, you're attuned to buildings in the way that a lay person isn't. So like when you went there, when you approach the Obama list, like what is the feeling that you had and what was the experience of like entering the Obama zone? Yeah, definitely. So there, the Obamalisk is just one part of the campus. The campus is actually huge. And you enter from the square, which is like opens up into the forum and the library. The forums ahead of you and the library is on the right. And both of those buildings are perfectly fine. scaled to like at the human scale.

They're just kind of like they're boring for the architects work like Todd William's Billy Shen. Like they're kind of boring for their work. But they're just perfectly salvageable buildings. And then you have like the Obama list, which is like something completely different. It is like tangentially related because it's like has the same stonework. But the immediate thing that strikes you about the building is the scale of the building is hard to convey.

It is absolutely huge. It's like the tallest building for like. a while, basically. You can see it from the University of Chicago campus, which it's more visually in communication with because the University of Chicago is, of course, a collection of very expensive buildings by very expensive architects. And some would say the maternity word of neoliberalism. And you can see it's perfect. You can see it's grave just from the campus. From cradle to grave. Yeah, from cradle to grave. It all happened in Chicago, folks. But you mentioned that these these architects.

they're known for their work in stone. And like, what is the effect of this kind of giant, what seems like a giant block of granite, but then like there are sort of, I don't know, like transparencies in it. Is how I would describe it? Yeah. So first of all,

one of the most enlightening comments made in the press presentation was when Todd Williams said that Obama wanted to be an architect and told them that he wanted to be an architect. He wasn't the president. And their look up their faces was grave, I have to say. That's like, fantasizing of being an architect, like that was a joke on Seinfeld. That was like the fake job that George told everyone he had.

I'm an architect. You're an architect? I'm not. I don't see architecture coming from you. I love that because something about like, I don't know, about being a guy, like, Why is architects such a fantasy job for so many men, do you think? Oh, I don't know.

I think it's about the control element of it. I think it's about power. The power to change space is the power to change the world. It attracts a lot of megalomaniacs. That's why there's not so many women architects, you know. It's like not for the broads. It is, I mean, it is also just like one of those things like what people wish being a lawyer was like where it's a perfect middle point of a quantitative and qualitative field.

where it's not as boring as being a guy who, you know, just enters numbers into a computer all day or an ant researcher. But it's not like being an adult graffiti artist who does legal graffiti either. Yeah, for sure. You're the perfect middle point. Yeah. And also being an architect, like in the real world is mostly, unless you own your own firm and are doing like kind of neat bespoke work, it's kind of a bad job. It's really underpaid. Oh, yeah.

And it's mostly being on computer. But anyways, to return back to this Obama list, there was another clarifying moment where what the architect said, that Barack Obama wanted the building to be interesting from all sides. Which is like, oh, it sure is interesting from all sides. But the scale of the building is absolutely massive. And one of the things that makes it kind of not work is that that's, the granite work, it's this granite from New Hampshire. They've busted in. It's in slabs. So it's in, so it's, it's in slabs. It's not like one continuous block. And the scale of the slabs, it's kind of just misplaced with the scale of the building that makes these giant, massive monumental

slabs just look like checkerboard, basically. And it really actually loses the monumentality that they're sort of going for. It just looks like a flat surface. And so if, if, If you look at the building, it has four corners. It's not a specific shape that has a name. I'm sure the mathematicians have given it a name at some point. But if we're looking at it from the south, so towards the south side, you have this absolutely atrocious stained glass window that I find so repellent. It's like hard to describe. I guess the only way I can describe it is it looks like graffiti, like cool guy graffiti.

but it's like three stories tall. And what does the stained glass window depict? Nothing. It's squiggles. It's like squiggles and squares. It's just like jism, you know. I mean, come on. Just like, I know he's been accused of having a Messiah complex,

but like lean into it. Put yourself right in the center of stained glass window. Oh, yeah. And then above the stained glass window, there are like three like little pockmark windows. There's a window. a cutout and then there's a window to the side and that is one side of the

Obama list. Then of course you have the front facing side to the street and that is just basically all stone except for that famous cutout corner with the text. And what is the text? It creates this kind of transparency or like sort of, I don't know, access

of light but like it's, I don't know, it breaks up the sort of monolithic face of this building. Yeah, it wraps around the corner and the text is made out of granite. Actually, like from the inside of looking out, the text is kind of a neat effect because it's so sort of sculptural. But actually as a motif, or as like what we call a party, it doesn't really work. Because it wraps around the corner and you can't actually read the text.

Like the only way you can read the text is by drone, basically. Yeah, which again, also very fitting to the Obama presidency. But it's from his speech on the 50th anniversary of the March on Selma. So it's his words. Like it's not like the death. Declaration of Independence or some shit. It's like some shit he said. Yeah, that can't be discerned or read from street level or from human beings,

but would make some light reading for Godzilla. Yeah, exactly. It's like Madlips from down there, man. Yeah. So you approach this structure and Kate, I like that your description of what entering this building was like, you compared it to airport security. Oh, yeah. Oh, there's one last bit I want to like add about the exterior.

There's like a kind of butt half that faces the river that's just like, the river that's just like kind of the throwaway half. And because Obama insisted on it being interesting on all side, there's like some ribbing on like one of the corners. And like the architects were fucking bullshitting saying it was like cornrows from the Midwest. And it's like, we're bullshit about this whole thing. Like I was like, you know, someone asked like, where did the form come from?

And they were just saying that it's like four hands reaching up and cupping the light. It's like the fuck it is, man. Just like, you know, it's a rock. You have to be honest with ourselves But there is a picture on the slide Where it had like a bunch of different rock shapes That they just kept making the shape until Obama liked it And this is the one that he picked

So how about so like that that's the outside That's kind of sort of hard to discern shape Sort of vaguely foreboding sort of ominous Not not very accessible But then like when you get inside the building Like what do you what is the first thing The visitors to this library or or, you know, non-library will be treated to.

Yeah, so this is so funny. You walk in there and there's, like, security eyes. You have to go through a metal detector. The lighting is super harsh. It's basically, like, going to customs, like, when you're down in the bowels of O'Hare, if anyone knows O'Hare's customs. But anyways, like, there's, like, guys and security guards

and they go through your purse and, like, they, and on the other side, the lighting is really harsh. Like, I can't, like, it's hard to describe how hard. It's like Walmart lighting, dog. And they, on the other side, there's a big sign that says hope. And it's like each letter is in a difference. It looks like a ransom note, basically.

Like the letters are cut out of like a magazine or newspaper. Yeah. Mailed to the American public. Yeah, basically. And then you go around a corner and then you open to like one of two useless atriums. They have like big public art in there, but there's nothing in there. You just have to go through them. And what's funny is like when you actually go to access the museum, you know, for museums,

like circulation is really important because. like architecturally because it's a moment of arrival and departure. And like they basically shove you against the stone slab. Like you have these big massive atria. And instead of like having like a cool moment with like an elevator and escalator, it's like no, you have to go all the way to the edge of the building and then go in like this claustrophobic tunnel upwards like surrounded by stone.

And then you arrive at the first floor and it's fucking Barack Obama's voice. And what's he telling you? I don't remember. Hope and change. Hope and change. Because every level has his voice. And it's just like you filter it out immediately. But the first level of the museum is like extremely funny to me. Because he has like these small displays. Like there's four or five of them with like a handful like maybe five or six articles.

For like from different liberation movements. Like, you know, abolition, civil rights, women's suffrage. the labor movement, which I find really egregious, giving the whole GM situation. Exit. Yeah. And so, and I think another one, which is like the Great Society. But anyways, like, there's, like,

they're small little, like, triangular, um, kia, or not kiosk, but this place. And then you go into this room and the whole room is kind of like one marquee. And it's like, okay, all that liberation stuff happened in like this corner of the museum. And then the rest of it is then Barack Obama, was born. Yeah, like, is it like, it presents sort of a timeline and you like, you see you're like, yes, the abolitionist movement, the suffrage movement, civil rights era, labor struggles in this

country. And then you kind of like, turn a corner and you're in the Obama zone because it's just like, after that, Obama was born. Yeah, basically. And then like, is it, does it give sort of a timeline of his life and professional career? Yep, absolutely. There's like, you know, there's some pictures with him is like, and obviously Michelle too, like when they're kids and there's like, blah, blah, blah, the south side. And then the, first of all, this whole thing feels like a big apology to the south

side of Chicago. The amount of times they mentioned this, like, they know they stole that land, like, is what I'm saying. Like, and all the Obama Foundation people were like, I'm from the south side of Chicago and I made it in life and it's like, oh my God. But anyways, like then there's a big video of

Obama being like the 90s, it felt like change was happening. Things felt possible in the 90s. And I went to school in the 90s. And then there's like some memorabilia from when he was at Harvard. There's just a bunch of pictures of him doing shit. There's like leaflets he wrote for like when he was doing community organizing and like newspaper articles he wrote or whatever.

And then I kind of blacked out after after that. And I came out on the other side of, oh, it talks about him running for state Senate. And there's like pictures of him and like the building in Chicago. or not in Chicago and Springfield. Now, another crucial feature of presidential libraries is you've got to have some artifacts from from his years in office. Like, you know, Lyndon Johnson, he's got his cowboy boots. He's got all the sort of gifts he was given by visiting foreign dignitaries and heads of state. They have a recreation of the Oval Office.

What are some of the Obama artifacts, like the sort of the totems of his time in office that are on display? Yeah, there are lots of them. Well, it starts with the election and they have a wall full of the buttons. The election stuff from 08 was kind of neat to see because I remember that being in high school. But then you go up, there's a lot of different. He has a replica of the Oval Office also, and you can take pictures in there. They're like Michelle Obama's gowns are in there. There's a whole wall of stuff that people made for his campaign.

Like, you know, Obama Air Force One's Obama swimsuit. Obama like quilts Obama you know whatever And so there's a lot of articles like about him There are some in on the top floor like there's a panel About all of the species that are named after him For all the species Yeah of animals that were named after him

What like are these animals that were discovered Like subsequent to him becoming president Yeah and on that same floor So like give me what's an example Yeah, okay, so there's one, there's a lizard called Obama Don Grasyllis. And then there's a spider called Spintharis Barack Obama. There's a wasp, which is, you know, that's, I love that. The wasp is Lagu-Glossum Obama.

I thought that was more for the George H.W. Bush presidential library, am I right? Felix, you think, like, Felix, obviously I know how you think, feel about this, but they should have the limo in the library. Yeah, I'm quitting the show to work there. I'm really excited about it. No, actually, like, Kate, I told my family about this episode because my mom and sister are about to be like,

I guess this is kind of an offensive comparison, but they are like Nelson and Winnie Mandela a bit for being against this library. Like, they fucking hate this thing. So it's like 90% of the people that live in like Hyde Park and fucking Ken Wood and, and, and everything.

But I don't know. Like Obama was our senator for Hyde Park, right? And it was always clear that he had great ambitions beyond just being a Illinois state senator, which, you know, fair enough. But it is sort of a throwback to something he did while he was the state senator for Hyde Park, which is there was a horrible renovation of our famous Rock Beach, the point there that he just, you know, he didn't give a shit about. He was working on his four-year plan to stake out Jeremiah Wright and like every fucking Palestinian he ever talked to.

He was, and it just sort of perfect to come full circle with this fucking hideous building that, I don't know, will create like three permanent jobs for people who live in the fucking neighborhood, actually. And just Chicago is one thing going for it. It has only, the one thing that's going for it is that it's like, it's like, the rent in Chicago is as cheap as like Mississippi because we're so stupid and we overbuilt so much. And obviously it's more expensive than it should be. But it is the one remaining place in America where you can get a really big place not making like $300,000 a year. And he is working his damnedest to change that with this disgusting building and doing it in the most boring. I won't say it's the worst part of Chicago,

but definitely the most boring in Hyde Park. You should be paid to live in Hyde Park, and now he is raising the rents there. It's the perfect capstone to perhaps the truest author of our current predicament and the author of several horrible Netflix specials. For sure.

There's this idea in architecture that's like a, there's this Brazilian Marxist architectural theorist whose name I don't remember right now because my book is in a box because I'm moving. It's called the rent of form. And it basically makes the argument that like these kinds of buildings generate a second rent by way of like their use in like photography like or

weddings or, you know, car commercials or marketing or, you know, real estate speculation. So it's like, you know, it's, it's, this is like a kind of peak example of that where it's like, you built the thing, you may be initial investment. It costs, you know, as much as it costs. And there's a museum in it, and that's ostensibly like the purpose of the building. But it has a secondary purpose, a secondary economic purpose. That's unique to these kinds of monumental museum-type buildings that have been the norm since basically the 1990s. It's like Millennium Park, you know, and a bunch of others.

You know, there are many examples. Concert halls, you know, museums, concert halls. like all kinds of like crazy public buildings that like run like I don't know 400 million dollars or more. They all have this this secondary property. And this is one of that methodology of building is really kind of over. Like the idea of like the star architect is really kind of diminishing. This is probably one of the last buildings. I write in my piece I write that this is one of the last buildings of the 2010s.

It's just late. Oh yes. It's a very 2010's way of building and thinking. And we can't economically as a field do that anymore. I thought that was a very good way of putting it because Obama, more than any other president. I mean, I'm sure that even now, there's a very identifiable Trump to aesthetic. But that will, you know, we know what that is. That is like being a public streamer whose only thing is just calling people different racial slurs and shooting someone.

It's promoting gambling to prenatal children. Obama core is it is a type of aesthetic and consumer experience that you could identify in movies, sub prestige and prestige TV shows, literature, music, and even video games. And architecture, I'm sure. Yeah, it is obviously specifically associated with the early to mid-2010s. but it is to just do a shorthand for all these incredibly disparate categories. It is the last thing you can remember before full and shitification of all. Yeah. Yeah. And Kate, like, that's what's so fascinating to me about this.

Like, and I think your comments about how this is like the last building of the 2010 really kind of crystallizes it for me because both as like a physical space and a political project, it does seem like Obama, the whole Obama core thing now finds itself in a completely different universe. And I'm wondering, what is the narrative about the Obama years, about his presidency

that is presented by his own building? Yeah, definitely. I think that there are a number of factors going into this. I think the grounds is a huge one. There's like this kind of sprawling park. There's a lot of green energy type stuff that's like surface level. Like, for example, the trees are like little sticks

because they're going to take like 100 years to be real trees. but like the point is that he planted the trees. You know what I'm saying? Like there's also the Nancy, Nancy Pelosi honorable car park which has solar panels on top. They named the parking lot after Nancy Pelosi.

Yeah, they didn't. It has solar panels on the on the ceiling. Yeah. And like, like, talk about a different era. And like,

you know, we talked about on the show last couple weeks, all of the insane and idiotic renovations that Donald Trump is planning for these. like turning the reflecting pool into a swimming pool. Obviously the fucking the ballroom. Yeah. The USC arena.

I saw it just the other day he's talking about building a promenade to like, I add on to the Lincoln Memorial. And like the thing is it's very much of the moment because it's all so cheap and stupid and chintzy and just fraud doing. Yeah. And I'm like, but like this Obama era that's just like it's like, you know,

going into a time machine to experience stuff like this. But like this narrative is still, it seems visually and I guess like spiritually so out of place in contemporary American society. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that the sort of permanence of it, like this idea of like a posterity that can, that, you know, you build in stone for posterity. Like nothing feels like we're doing anything for posterity anymore. I have to be.

Yeah. It's like we're just wiping until it fucking crashes. Yeah. birds. We, you know, you know, like,

I wanted to bring this up, and this is like, this is a broader, I guess, like, broader question away from the Obama Library, but it isn't about how politics and architecture intersect.

And one of the things I've been fascinated by over the last five, 10 years, I guess, is the rise of the sort of prominence of aesthetic concerns among the right wing in this country, among the young online right,

like, like the sort of, their visual and kind of, I don't know, meme, is very much based on this idea of like, you know, showing photos of what Pizza Hut used to look like and be like, why, like, this is what they've taken from you. You know, like the marble bust avi, you know, like photos of like Gothic cathedrals and be like,

you know, men, you know, who, you know, didn't know how to read, built this, you know, hundreds of years ago and like, why can't we build anything like this anymore? And I guess my question is like, how do you view like the prominence of this kind of like extolling the architecture of the past as representing kind of virtue, beauty, and like a public civic-mindedness contrasted with the overwhelming shittiness of everything you see today. And the thing is like, they're not wrong, but like everything today is just like a homogenous box, a homogenous glass box. Everything is made so cheaply and so shittily. And the thing is, it is demoralizing to look out, to walk through to exist in,

to just see how the impermanence of contemporary architecture and how interchangeable and, yes, demoralizing it is. But like, what do you make of this political intersection with architecture in contemporary, you know, right-wing discourse? I mean, I think this building is really representative of neoliberalism writ large. Like, obviously, like, there's, like, the Janus face of the, like, the rent-a-form and, like, the economic development,

the gentrification, all of that. the privatization of public space. Like that's there, but so is also the liberalism part, right? Like this idea of a civic monument, even if it's like completely like narcissistic in a really freaky way. This idea of, you know, bettering the built environment through architectural design. This idea that the point of architecture is supposed to be generative and it's supposed to be innovative and it's supposed to create something new that hasn't existed yet.

these are all very you know these are all elements that I think are on their way out architecture is changing and not just in like we live in slop world but even within like the liberal like architectures are broadly liberal field like I think most architects genuinely some of them hate their lives because they have to build like shitty apartment buildings in Nashville or whatever but like the architects that work on these kinds of projects I think and like on small-scale projects they genuinely feel that they are doing something that contributes positive to society, whether it's like green building or, you know, just like adaptive reuse to save it, you know, embodied carbon by keeping old buildings. Like, there is like still a liberal

ethos to architecture that is feeling increasingly obsolete compared to like where architectural discourse is going. And so, yeah, of like the other side, the right wing backlash has been really long in the making. To me, a lot of this is emblematic of like the discourse worse from the 1980s during postmodernism, of which Trump, like, kind of played both sides when he was a developer in the 80s, for example. So, like, he, you know, Trump Tower is a pretty modernist building. It's a late modernist building. On the inside, of course, like, it's like a cheesy steakhouse or whatever. And his apartment has got, like, the gold foil ceilings or whatever. And Marlago is one thing, too. It's like, he's always talking out of both sides of his mouth in terms of, like, traditionalism and

modernism. His pivot to being a trad guy is relatively, like a wholly committed trad guy is a relatively new. But I think that, yeah, like, we in America don't receive an education and architecture at all. Like, you go to school and you, like, will go to school your entire life. And the only building you'll ever learn about is the World Trade Center. A building you can't even visit anymore. I know.

Yeah. And I think that that's a big part of it. Like, there's a kind of idea that there's, like, some missing culture that has been destroyed, that is, like, a tactile way of doing, like, you know, the, the, the, the, the, cathedral nostalgia and stuff like that. There is some legitimacy to that where it's like, yeah, everything is slop, but then their answer is just like, what if slop but like had columns, you know? And that to me, there's like the politics of that is like pretty, um, it's just like, yeah, that's like sort of typical right wing politics. It's like using architecture as a form of like

sort of, uh, dog whistling about like Western values and, and things like that. Um, but, you know, the, it's actually, what's interesting is it's actually ruined the 50 year project to rehabilitate classicism in this country, which was a right-wing project that was, like, supported by, like, other presidents, like, George W. Bush was a great patron of, like, Robert Am Stern, who was, like, a kind of right-wing neoclassicist architect.

And it's like, but, like, there's been a huge push for, like, re-do it, like, re-teaching traditional architecture and, like, doing preservation and all that stuff in this country that is mostly conservative, but not entirely. and like that 50-year project has been completely annihilated by Donald Trump. Like all those people like look like assholes now even if they weren't. And so it's funny like this stuff ruins everything it touches. Like even the things that like should be on its eye.

It's like really, really nasty. I guess like when I think about all this, I think of my own life experience. Listeners of the show will know that I went to grade school at the school attached to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which is in Morningside Heights right outside Columbia in New York City. And it is, I think, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world or second largest. But the point is, in the early 20th century, they had the idea to build, essentially, a Gothic cathedral, like with limestone just like quarried in Pennsylvania and like, basically, like, to a T like they did it in like the 13th century.

But they had modern architectural, you know, they had modern construction equipment. And the interesting thing to me about all that is that the building, the St. John the Divine, is still unfinished to this day. I think technically, like, it took Notre Dame shorter time to be constructed because the St. John the Divine is still unfinished. Why is it still unfinished? They ran out of money. And there's no money coming because it is enormously expensive. Like, as you said, to build anything out of stone to create that sense of permanence. Like, why don't you see buildings built out of brick anymore? Why are an apartment building constructed out of brick? Why are they all these glass and steel coffins?

Why is all the material so shoddy? Why is it? Is the construction so shitty? It's all the bottom line. It's the only way the people who build, who construct buildings for profit can turn a profit. Yeah. So that's it. Like, architecture does reflect the values of the society that creates it, right?

And like, what do the, what does, you're talking about how the Obama Library represents sort of the bygone values of an era that's now passed by. But like, when you look at the contemporary American landscape where you just walk around this country, what values are being imparted to you? Like, how do you receive that as a, as a completely minded person.

I mean, I've been running the blog McMansion Hell for 10 years now. And it's really funny. I'm living in like kind of the worst and best time of my life for doing that. Because like they put fucking Bill Pulte in his like national security advisor. And he's like the guy from Pulte houses. Like he's like one of the massive like mass builders like single family home builders in America. So we literally live in a McMansion occupied government. But yeah.

I mean, I think that there's always been, you know, we talk of a divide between like high architecture and vernacular, let's call vernacular architecture. And vernacular architecture always tells the truth of how things are made. Like, it tells the story of the development of mass production, for example, which is also the story of, you know, labor in this country. It tells the stories of, you know, suburbanization for better or for worse. The suburbs as like a drain on the same. that created like super uber racism or the suburbs is like an opportunity like sponsored by fdr you know and by the f h a to for people to own their own house and have their own you know their own sort of life in that house and those houses are mass produced and they tell a story of like you know people didn't mind that they all look the same for example and they were so small because they were just like sparse because they were all basically funded you know that was just the best way to do it and so like as we get through, like the, you know, as we get to neoliberalism, you know, the architectural fabric of the country, I think really does start to come apart. There people always ask me, for example,

like, why are there McMansions? And there are a number of reasons why there are McMansions. Obviously, like mass production of goods is one of them, like, you know, like clients not wanting to hire architects and instead choosing custom builders so they can have like, like they're, you know, everything they can do, everything they want, they can just have it dialed in, even. if it's like ugly as balls. And then, you know, another one though is, you know, for example, why do they have McMansions of like 1980? That's when, you know, the number of rich people in this country, like people making over a million dollars, I think it quadrupled between 1980 and 2000. And that's basically this, the main reason why we have McMansions. And so, like,

the more we see like this insane wealth inequality, you know, the more like the bottom falls out of every other part of society, the more like we rely on like just like, treats and cheapness, you know, the less possible it becomes to make things of any permanence. Even like everyday houses are like look shittier than they did like 40 years ago. They have like those, you know, that plastic concrete board that looks like board and batten. That they're all like a hospital white with the black millions. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like we live, yeah, it's all of these things are, you know, they look even more fake than a McMansion. They look completely made out of plastic. And it's just like, that's just the cheapest way to do it. And

part of the reason why that is is because land has gotten extremely expensive. So, like, if you spend all your money on the lands and, like, the house kind of come second. But there's a number of, number of reasons. I mean, a lot, I think mass production gets a lot of flack because it's what enabled all of us to live where we live. So you can't just say that it's that. But it has everything to do with changes in real estate development away, a lot of the times, away from large-scale developments, like, you know, planned developments, apartment buildings, you know, wherever. towards single family houses and now back again to these sort of shitty apartment buildings that we have

that are really like the built form of the spreadsheet. Like that's what they are. No, for real, because like architects, you know, they just live in these programs. They have like four programs. Everything, all of the materials, they're all programmed in. They just plug and play. It's the cheapest way of doing it.

And it's like the main thing is that you can't, you know, there's liability issues with architecture. So if you add a curve to a building, that's like extra hours. extra materials, extra liability. So the developer is just like, screw that. It's going to be a flat face with like shitty aluminum paneling because like that's how I make my bottom line.

And that's just how it is. Like the liability thing is huge and under, you know, under talked about. But yeah, it's just the bottom line, the bottom line, the bottom line. Kate, I guess like given this how like architecture, like the spaces that we inhabit, the spaces that human beings move in and out of every day, be it your home, your residence, like the place where you work, public transportation. That basically like right and left centered in between everybody senses this kind of shittiness.

Yeah. And demoralization of like the cheapness, the impermanence, and just like the ugliness of everything. Yeah. As a reflection of our economy, our cultural values. But like, I guess I'm going to more hopeful. Is there any good buildings out there today? Like, is there anyone making it? in good buildings? And if not, like, what would it take to return, to create, I don't know,

like a more holistic sense of inner space is something to, I don't know, uplift the individual rather than crush it? Yeah, I think that architecture, like high architecture, for example, is making, is in a sort of transitional period that I find really interesting. We really are moving away from these kinds of huge monumental tourist buildings that really define the 2010s and the 2000s before them, like the Frank Gary type stuff, the Bilbao Museum, the Obama Center, like, that model of urban development isn't really feasible anymore in part because urban development has already been kick started. So, like, there's no actual need for these buildings to serve as like an impetus for, in a lot of ways, and there's not much land to build them on it, and there's not much money to pay for

them. But at the same time, what that means is that like the old giants of architecture, these famous firms. Their leaders are dying. Their firms are left headless. Architecture is moving in a different direction. The direction it's moving in is really interesting. It involves a lot of building or adaptive reuse of existing buildings. There's a really interesting theoretical paper called a moratorium on new construction, which says that architecture basically, architecture shouldn't build anything anymore. Like we have all the buildings. NIMBY, NIMBY, Limby. I'm the president of NIMBYism by the way, But we have the existing buildings. Can I be vice president?

Please, please. I hate it. No more fucking buildings. No more fucking buildings. No, but like the, um, the idea is that like, you know, we have all these structures, especially from modernism, to have this embodied carbon that like they get torn down to build new things. And it's just a waste. And they can all, there's just so much waste in architecture.

And so there are a number of firms that are really working with this concept of, of adaptive reuse that I find really interesting. One is this firm in New York called coadaptive. And they do this really interesting, they have this really interesting project where they re-savage materials from like all over and have like a huge warehouse full of them. So everything gets a second life. And another one is called Buildis, B-L-D-U-S in D-C. And they're using sort of what we could call cheap materials and like really elevated ways. And these kind of small-scale firms that like obviously they're not going to change the world.

Architecture doesn't change the world, by the way. Architecture makes profit for real estate. Like let's just get that off the table. But like in terms of like within like the police. political boundaries that these architects are working in like these this is the more interesting stuff that's happening uh there's no more obama centers all right well we're gonna we'll wrap it up there for today uh kate wagner i really want to thank you for your your building expertise and for your uh you know personal view into the obama obama tombstone thank you thank you thanks for having me i pleasure all right and uh actually real quick one last

question before you go. I got to ask, you know, the expert. Do you have a favorite building? Oh, that's a hard question. But yes, I do have a favorite building. My favorite building is the Berlin Phil by Han Sharun. I studied architectural acoustics when I was in graduate school. And that is my, that is just my favorite building because it's, it's freaky. It's like a weird late modern building. It's like orange on the outside and like a terrace on the inside. There's just, I have thought about this question for many years. And it's, still the same answer. Well, I would say just from the outside, just from looking at it,

I would say the Chrysler building is my favorite building. That's a great building. Very beautiful. All right, let's leave it there. Once again, Kate Wagner, architecture critic for the nation, author of the blog, McMansion Hell. We will have links to her work in the episode description. But that does it for today's show, everybody. Until next time, bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Like a lion In the lines of smoke