The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, years behind schedule and still weeks from opening, has already gifted the internet its first architectural punchline. Text from a Barack Obama speech inscribed on the exterior of the center's 225-foot museum tower is, by most accounts, nearly impossible to read from the ground, prompting mockery from architecture critics and casual observers alike.

Lee Bay, the Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic, posted to X on Monday after visiting the site in person. His verdict was not kind.

"The new letters – an excerpt from Obama's Selma speech – are tough to read to me, giving off the lorem ipsum vibes."

For the uninitiated, "lorem ipsum" is the gibberish placeholder text used by graphic designers when they need to fill space before actual copy arrives. That's what a professional architecture critic saw when he looked at the crown jewel of the Obama legacy project.

A Monument to Readability Problems

The text in question comes from Obama's 2015 speech in Selma, Alabama, marking the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Fox News reported. It includes lines like "You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be." Noble words. The problem is that the inscription wraps around multiple sides of the tower in a way that renders it into visual confetti for anyone standing at ground level.

Logan Dobson, a vice president at Targeted Victory, captured the experience by posting what the text actually looks like when you try to read it from below: "YOU ARE AMERICA ED BY HABILAND UNENCUMBERED ADY TO SEIZE WE."

Journalist and columnist Salena Zito kept it short: "The dyslexic in me is not amused."

Other users on X were less diplomatic. One said they "gave up after developing a headache three lines from the top." Another compared the building to a "WW2-era German anti-aircraft tower." Locals have reportedly dubbed it "The Obamalisk."

One unnamed Chicago photojournalist offered a telling observation after seeing it from the air:

"I noticed when I was in the air that the sentences wrap around the west and south sides of the building, and looks decent in a very specific spot on the ground or very good from the air… but like that's not an ideal design in my opinion."

So the inscription works beautifully if you happen to be in a helicopter. For everyone else, it's a word scramble.

A Decade in the Making

The Obama Foundation first announced the presidential center more than a decade ago. What was supposed to be a straightforward legacy project stalled through lawsuits and federal reviews, the specifics of which remain murky. The 20-acre campus on Chicago's South Side will include a library, athletic facilities, a museum, and more. Its opening is now slated for June.

The Obama Foundation described it late last year as "a lively community hub, economic anchor, and beacon of democracy right here on the South Side of Chicago." In its year-end construction recap for 2025, the Foundation noted that crews were "preparing support structures ahead of the installation of screen text taken from President Obama's speech 'You Are America,' which marked the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches."

The Design That Speaks Volumes

The tower's Brutalist style, a post-war aesthetic popularized in the 1950s known for its modular and minimalist designs, was already polarizing before the text went up. Adding an inscription that can only be deciphered from a specific vantage point, or from a news helicopter, did not help the building's public relations problem.

One user on X did note the positive: "It actually does look good. Love or hate the guy, at least the presidential library will have a nice park for people to walk through." That same user then pivoted to what many South Side residents are actually worried about: "right now the main problem seems to be the gentrification and house price increases in the neighborhood."

That tension is worth pausing on. The center was sold as an economic anchor for a community that needed one. Whether it anchors the community or prices it out is a question the Foundation has never adequately addressed.

The Inscription Says More Than It Intends

There is something almost too perfect about a former president inscribing his own words on the tallest structure in his legacy complex, only for those words to be functionally illegible to the people walking below. One X user landed the observation cleanly: "He put his own speech on the outside of his library? Find yourself someone who loves you like Obama loves himself."

Presidential centers are, by nature, exercises in self-mythology. Every president builds one. But most manage the basic task of making their chosen words readable to visitors. The Obama Center took a decade, weathered legal challenges, planted itself in a neighborhood already anxious about displacement, and unveiled an inscription that gives people headaches.

The words on the tower say "We." The design says something else entirely.