Enclosing the Building Marks an Exciting Chapter

After marking a major construction milestone over the summer with the topping out of the Museum Building, Lakeside Alliance is quickly heading towards closing another chapter — completing the glass installation on site. The work to close the envelope, or the exterior of the building, significantly progressed in recent months with the installation of an 83-foot-tall, stained-glass piece of artwork on the Museum’s North side and several other glass elements. 

This phase of work calls for different trades and subcontractors with the skills to meet the demands of a complex design using high-performance materials that are relatively new to the construction scene. It also provides the opportunity to shift the type of work that can be performed on the interior, especially as winter arrives. 

“Enclosing the building kicks off interior work,” said Karina Antunez, assistant superintendent for Lakeside Alliance. “Some of those activities are weather and moisture sensitive, which is why it’s vital to complete as much of the exterior of the building as possible first.”

One thing is for certain: This is no ordinary approach to glass. In fact, architect Brian Abell of Tod Williams Tsien Architects describes the glass as monumental in and of itself.

“Glass is a big feature in a lot of architects’ work these days, but that’s not the approach our office takes. With the Obama Presidential Center, we have the glass focused in places where it’s effective as opposed to conceiving of this building as a glass-wrapped structure,” Abell said. “Each of the glass openings is distinct. One of the more unique features here is it’s all clad in bronze, which goes back to the monumental elegance that is a driver of the design overall given the status of the building.” 

There are windows in the sunken gardens that connect the inside and the outside, and smaller punched out windows that look like they’re carved out of the stone. Then, there is the energy performance component. “We want to limit the amount of heat gained from the sun and have the glass well-insulated,” Abell said. The glass for the Museum Building was custom-made by U.S. Architectural Glass & Metal, the subcontractor overseeing the curtain wall and bronze cladding work on site.

There is one element that is sure to draw significant attention — the 83-foot-tall abstract art installation by New York artist Julie Mehretu, who drew inspiration from President Obama’s remarks at the 50th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery.

Terrence Singletary, senior project manager for U.S. Architectural Glass and Metal, traveled to Germany last year to check on the progress at Mayer of Munich, which included an intricate process of layering a mix of crushed glass and water atop glass. The completed work was shipped from Germany to the project site in Jackson Park, where it was installed over a few days in September. “As a bystander, you see this massive glass wall, but the process and nuances behind it to erect the individual opening was impressive,” Singletary said.

With this level of complexity, a great deal of communication and coordination has gone into the glass installations throughout the site. But Abell said he would expect nothing less from an ambitious project meant to inspire and support big ideas. 

“The Obamas and the Foundation decided to make this project about not just the past, a monument to the presidency, but also about the future, about activism and activating people. That has played into the goals of the design — the Obamas pushed the team to keep going further, with high ambitions for sustainability and excellence in the design. That also carried into the goals for Lakeside Alliance, and the goal of creating local jobs for people who might not have worked on anything like this before.”