Obama Center gets in the skin game, with fancy new granite cladding on the tower

The museum tower on the under-construction Obama Presidential Center campus is showing a little skin these days as workers install the granite exterior cladding that will eventually cover the 235-foot structure.

"I’m just so excited," said Billie Tsien, founding partner of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the New York City firm leading the center's design.

"The building will probably top out in a couple of months, but they’re already cladding the bottom," she said. "After all this time it is very, very exciting."

The tower — which is about the height of the historic 16-story Monadnock Building at Jackson and Dearborn streets — will be the most prominent building on the 19-acre campus. Even as it rises, the structure is visible from blocks away.

And the swirl-patterned granite panels will contribute much to the visual identity of the tower — while perhaps adding color and life to a structure that appeared cold and mausoleum-like in renderings.

The renderings were made before the designers had figured out what type of stone would be used, however.

Mined in New Hampshire, the tower's granite, called "Tapestry," reads a bit darker than the cladding depicted on those widely circulated renderings of the center.

"Maybe in the earlier renderings it read pinker," Tsien said. "I think it will read not so pink — but with creamy pink tones. It will be a deeper dramatic swirl of a dark gray and white and cream."

Tsien said her firm and the Obama Foundation picked the Tapestry granite because "we wanted [stone] that has lots of movement in it. When it rains and the building gets wet, it becomes very dramatic — and when it dries out [also]."

The granite panels are newly visible near the tower's base, particularly on the building's west side near 60th Street and Stony Island Avenue — although workers began affixing the stone to the museum and the center's forum and library buildings since last November, an Obama Foundation spokesperson said.

The design team and the foundation considered other types of stone cladding before settling on the New Hampshire granite. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects used gold Missouri limestone in their design for the 11-story Reva and David Logan Center, 915 E. 60th St., on the University of Chicago campus about a mile east of the Obama complex.

"We looked at lots of stone from all over the world," Tsien said. "But the foundation believed we should look at stone from the United States."

Tsien says marble was ruled out due to Chicago's climate. And not without reason. The Aon Center, 200 E. Randolph St., was famously reclad in granite during the 1990s when its original skin of Italian Carrara marble began to bow and crack.

The center's forum and library buildings will be clad in Kitledge granite from the same New Hampshire quarry that yielded the Tapestry, the Obama Foundation spokesperson said.

About 120,000 square feet of granite will cover all three buildings. The cladding is expected to be done by year's end.

Also expected to be completed by the end of the year is a 45,000-square foot sports and wellness facility called Home Court, located on the south end of the presidential center campus.

The building's features include an indoor NBA-size basketball court and community spaces. Designed by architecture firm Moody Nolan, the building will be heated and cooled by geothermal energy.

Built in historic Jackson Park, the center's construction is scheduled to be completed by spring 2026.

Lee Bey is the Sun-Times architecture critic and a member of the Editorial Board.