r/modernarchitecture

👷‍♀️: YUUA 📏: 27.5m² 🗓️: 2012 📍: Toshima, Japan 📷: Toshihiro Sobajima

Designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects with Interactive Design Architects as the local Chicago partner, the Obama Presidential Center went through several major design refinements between its earliest public concepts and the final version now nearing completion in Jackson Park.
I put these images in chronological order because it’s interesting seeing how the project’s massing, façade language, landscape integration, and civic space evolved over time.

- Early Concept Model (2016–2017)
The first image shows one of the earliest public concept models after the design team was selected in 2016.
At this stage, the museum tower appears much more monolithic and simplified geometrically. The building massing is heavier overall, with fewer façade details and a more abstract sculptural appearance. The landscape plan was already a major part of the concept, emphasizing a campus integrated into Jackson Park instead of a traditional isolated presidential library complex.
This early phase focused more on symbolic monumentality and overall site organization than material detailing or façade refinement.

- Revised Design / Mid-Development Phase (2017–2019)
The second image shows the project after several rounds of public review, planning revisions, and technical development.
By this stage, the tower proportions became more refined vertically, and the façade system started evolving into the carved geometric pattern language that later became one of the defining visual features of the project.
The surrounding civic spaces also became more integrated into the architectural composition, with stronger pedestrian emphasis, expanded green roof systems, and more visually connected public plazas.
Compared to the earliest model, the project here feels less like a singular object in the landscape and more like an interconnected civic campus.

- Final Vision / Near-Final Rendering (2020–2021)
The final rendering shows the project much closer to the version now under construction.
The tower appears taller, more vertically dramatic, and significantly more refined in terms of façade articulation and materiality. The carved upper façade sections became more detailed and visually expressive, helping break up the large stone-like massing established in the earlier concepts.
The landscape design also became more immersive and publicly oriented, emphasizing circulation, gathering spaces, gardens, and long pedestrian sightlines through Jackson Park.
Construction officially began in 2021, and the final design reflects years of revisions balancing monumentality, civic accessibility, symbolism, engineering constraints, and public feedback

👷‍♀️: Kazuyo Sejima 📏: 458 m² 🗓️: 2008 📍: Yokohama, Japan 📷: Iwan Baan

Completed as a pair of interconnected towers, one residential and the other commercial, the structure rises to 156 metres and stands as one of the most defining examples of brutalist architecture in the former Yugoslavia

This drawing was created from a Revit 3D model and converted into clean linework for coloring and artistic interpretation.

Trying to combine architecture with creativity in a different way 🙌