If Barack Obama Were A Building...
flickr; Soaring to the sky, magnetha via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
Edward Lifson asked the following question in a posting in his blog, Hello Beautiful:
"If Barack Obama were a building...what building would Barack Obama be?" Well, I've been thinking it over the past few weeks and have come up with my answer. The John Hancock Center in Chicago.
My first instinct was to answer the question with Mies van der Rohe's buildings on the
city's lakefront at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive. Even though these two icons of modern architecture are older than the President, they were ground breaking structures at the time they were built. The Lake Shore pair ushered in a new era of residential construction that hadn't been seen since developers first tried convincing people that they could live in tall buildings in the 1890s. 860 and 800 pushed the envelope and became classics.
But, they weren't my final choice because I felt that although the buildings ushered in a
new era, they just didn't have the umph of the President. That's when I thought of the Hancock Building. It commands your attention with its size but it isn't hulking and bulky like the Sears Tower. Because the building tapers, when you stand at the base and look up, the structure soars upwards into the sky, like our hopes have soared with this election. There is a refinement that the Hancock tower posseses for me, that reminds me of Obama. It's elegant and stately, like the statesman that he is. And somehow, you know that under that outer skin there is a core of heavy-duty steel that can't be messed with.
Of all the buildings in all the cities in the world, why stick with Chicago? Because the
President is from Chicago. More importantly, he wouldn't be where he is today if he hadn't learned about the power of organizational, political machinery if it weren't for his Chicago experience. He found his partner in the city, and created a life for himself with Chicago as his background.
Once he completes his term of office, I'm sure there will be a lot of buildings named after
him. And, I'm not sure the Hancock company would be willing to have the name changed on their signature building. But for my money, when the time comes 4 or 8 years from now, lets rename the John Hancock Center the Barack Obama Center.
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