The controversial public building is ugly and intimidating, architectural vainglory battening on presidential ego, inappropriate to its setting, unmoored from memory and tradition.

Ross Douthat

The New York Times

Opinion

I’m talking, naturally, about former President Barack Obama’s unfinished presidential center, currently looming like a Star Wars barracks over the residents of Chicago’s South Side.

Admittedly it’s not the most important architectural controversy involving an American president at the moment. But how you think about President Donald Trump’s demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a large neo-classical ballroom should be connected to how you feel about the Obama megalith and the larger urban-progressive approach to public building.

Trump being Trump,

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