Last week , we take you where you guess Obama ’s forthcoming presidential program library should be built : Chicago , Hawaii , or ( psh ) New York ? Chicago was thepopular winner , and now the first speculative purpose for a Chicago library has been write online .
Michael Sorkin , a New York designer who has design masterplans everywhere from Chicago to China , lately posted his studio ’s conceptual program onScribd . The Crux Australis of their idea ? To use Obama ’s subroutine library as a catalyst for alteration in the South Side neighborhood of Woodlawn — which you might know as the mount for a Raisin in the Sun , chronicling the experience of a black family moving into the neighborhood during the late fifties .
Woodlawn today byEric Allix Rogers .
Before we get to the design , a lilliputian backstory about the neighborhood . Woodlawn , like many other South Side neighborhoods , struggled through during the 1970s and 1980s . The nearby University of Chicago , which pursued an aggressive rehabilitation of neighbour Hyde Park , attempted to do the same in Woodlawn in the 1990s .
During that process , the University commission Sorkin ( an alum ) to design a plan for its expansion into the neighborhood . The school ended up ditch Sorkin from the task , but he and his squad terminate up designing a series of “ substitute ” plans for the elaboration anyways , published in 2002 under the titleOther plan .
In the destruction , a community group called The Woodlawn Organization stop up fighting off the University ’s elaboration programme , and the University agree to a “ hands - off ” insurance . Today , Woodlawn is working towards its own renewal — though there ’s a distinct bounds between the neighbourhood and its wealthy neighbour .
The University of Chicago campus byThomas Barrat .
That gap is exactly what Sorkin want to close — using Obama ’s subroutine library . He project the coordination compound as a way to connect the two neighborhoods : Woodlawn , a historical district plagued by urban quandary , and the University of Chicago , a midpoint for knowledge that ’s been criticized for its human relationship with the neighborhoods around it .
The Obamas , you see , bridge the two perfectly . Not only did Obama pass three years on the South Side as a community organizer — he also taught at the University of Chicago . He and Michelle are a symbolic representation of the connective between the two once - distinct neighborhoods . It ’s hard to indicate with Sorkin ’s logic , although it ’s a bit tenuous to sprain the Obamas ’ personal life stories into a piece of urban architecture .
So , what precisely does the masterplan envision ? Not only a “ truly urban ” library that ’s more than just a footstall on a urban center block , but a living urban framework that let in miscellaneous - exercise commercial-grade and community space . A neighborhood that draw on Obama ’s administration — for example , a High School of Public Affairs affiliated with the University , where David Axelrod directs the Institute for Politics . A nub for nourishment and preventive music spur by the First Lady ’s oeuvre .
And so on — a form of “ framework urban center ” for the future of the South Side :
The program library itself is no more than an afterthought — the studio used a remain firm - in design to represent its location on the version :
I call Sorkin ’s studio apartment today to witness out whether they ’d been commission to make the labor — I imagined that an advocacy group in Chicago could ’ve ask them to design a proposal to beef up the city ’s claim to the depository library . In fact , they designed it simply for fun — as an exercise in the kind of urban - scale changes that Sorkin would care to see the program library spurring .
“ A challenge for the ex - president will be to rejoin to his organizer ’s career , enlarged by the skills and world power of rule he has so profusely acquired over the past two decennium , ” explains Sorkin . “ The thrilling task will be to help Woodlawn to become a model mix of category , races , histories , and desires that can do as an good example to cities everywhere . ”
In other parole , he want Obama to get back into community planning . And it ’s not a bad idea — this is where POTUS got his start , after all . Could history remember Barack Obama as an urban planner ? [ Scribd ]
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