The architectural world is reeling over President Trump's call for traditional designs for new Federal buildings. His proposed executive order is called "Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again," it takes an out-with-the-new, in-with-the-old approach to architecture, calling modern federal buildings constructed over the last five decades "undistinguished," "uninspiring" and "just plain ugly."
It's true that modernism abounds in D.C. Standing on a street corner near the National Mall, there's actually a mishmash of architectural styles. Let's talk about three of them: In the distance, the gleaming white pillars of the U.S. Capitol dome, the kind of classical architecture the president's order favors. Closer in, there's a towering, steel-mesh scrim that's part of the Eisenhower Memorial, a contemporary design by Frank Gehry which is under construction. Right behind the scrim, there's the beige, boxy, concrete-heavy Department of Education, a Brutalist building — the style a lot of people love to hate.
Marion Smith of the National Civic Art Society is one of them. He looks at this entire vista with disgust. "From where I'm standing, I see modernist structures, and the only hint of a classical building I can see is the top of the U.S. dome," he says. "That is not what our founders had in mind. This is a new reigning orthodoxy of modernist, Brutalist, postmodern design." (Brutalism was a popular movement with architects beginning in the 1950s, but it's mostly fallen out of favor.) The Society led a six-year campaign against Gehry's Eisenhower memorial, which forced the architect to make some changes to his orginal design.
And the organization has been the driving force behind the President's Executive Order. Smith believes Americans want the kind of neoclassical architecture that he says is designed to inspire the ideals of American democracy. "The White House, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, these are buildings that Americans recognize and love," he says.
Though Trump has put up buildings ranging from nineteenth-century retrofits to late-modern skyscrapers, his personal style is a combination of 2000s bling and Louis XIV—nothing in his penthouse Trump Tower apartment is spared a metallic coating. His choice of modernism for the style of the Trump Towers in Chicago and New York can simply be explained away by the fact that modern, all-glass buildings are the hegemonic aesthetic signature of corporate capitalism: It is the style of big business.
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Though Trump has put up buildings ranging from nineteenth-century retrofits to late-modern skyscrapers, his personal style is a combination of 2000s bling and Louis XIV—nothing in his penthouse Trump Tower apartment is spared a metallic coating. His choice of modernism for the style of the Trump Towers in Chicago and New York can simply be explained away by the fact that modern, all-glass buildings are the hegemonic aesthetic signature of corporate capitalism: It is the style of big business.
It’s also cheap to build.
-------------------------------- Life is short. Play with your dog.
