Early Draft, Executive Order, Feb 2020
Trump people were writing the Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture executive order for months. A White House official said polling showed a vast majority of Americans prefer traditional designs. New construction should command respect by the general public who they serve and not just architectural elites, he/she said.
This draft, dated Feb 2020, would have banned modernist design, prompting condemnation from the American Institute of Architects and National Trust for Historic Preservation. Architecture should be designed for the specific communities that it serves, reflecting the rich nation’s diverse places, thought, culture and climates. The AIA strongly opposes uniform style mandates for federal architecture. Architects are committed to honouring our past as well as reflecting our future progress, protecting the freedom of thought and expression that are essential to democracy, not mandating a return to classicism.
And politicians criticised the administration. “Imposing a preferred architectural style for federal facilities runs counter to our nation’s democratic traditions,” Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus wrote to GSA Administrator Emily Murphy. “Attempting to implement this misguided mandate from Washington DC, by circumventing Congress and gutting decades of GSA policy and practice without any public notice or hearing is even worse.” Titus has introduced legislation that would stop the GSA from blocking modernist designs!
Even before the final order, there was already an emphasis placed on classical style. In Aug 2020, a solicitation for a new federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale Fla. told architects that a traditional look would be the default style “absent special extenuating factors necessitating another style.” Ditto for the courthouse in Huntsville, Ala.
Final E.O: Promoting Beautiful Federal Civil Architecture
10 months later, at the end of President Donald Trump’s term, the finished order arrived. Its goal was that new Federal building designs should, like America’s beloved land-mark buildings, uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the U.S, command respect from the general public, and respect the architectural heritage of a region said executive order. They should also be visibly identifiable as civic buildings.
The executive order required the GSA to seek design-input from the general public and future staff of federal buildings before choosing a design. The president signed the executive order in late Dec 2020, making classical architecture the preferred style for federal buildings in Washington.
Trump’s executive order denounced architectural modernism, but it didn’t demand that all such projects should be in the classical style. Rather it had to update the policies guiding Federal architecture, ensuring that architects designing Federal buildings served the American people.
The White House lauded the Founding Fathers, specifically George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, for wanting the country’s public buildings to inspire Americans and encourage civic virtue. For c150 years following America’s founding, America’s Federal architecture continued to be characterised by beautiful and beloved buildings.
Its text extolled examples of classical US public architecture including the Second Bank of the U.S in Philadelphia, Pioneer Courthouse in Portland Oregon and the Thurgood Marshall U.S Courthouse in NY City. In Washington DC, classical buildings like the White House, Capitol building, Supreme Court, Department of the Treasury and Lincoln Memorial, have become iconic symbols of our system of government. Encouraging classical and traditional architecture does not exclude using most other styles, but care must be taken to ensure that all federal building designs command respect for their visual embodiment of America’s ideals.
The order said in the 1950s the federal government replaced the traditional designs with modernist ones that led to unappealing, undistinguished buildings and often clashed with the existing classicism. It also regretted Federal Government buildings put up from the 1950s on, making a jarring mixture of classical and modernist designs.
In the order Trump blamed the General Services Administration-GSA for selecting designs from prominent architects, without regard to local input or aesthetic preferences. Saying the GSA must seek public and staff input on designs, the order also established a President’s Council for Improving Federal Civic Architecture, to updated GSA’s architectural guidelines. The Council will police, if not forbid outright any federal project “that diverges from the preferred architecture set forth in this order, including mid-century Brutalist-style or de-constructivist architecture”.
The final order claimed that the advent of the General Service Administration’s Design Excellence Program in 1994 “sometimes impressed the architectural elite, but not the American people who the buildings were meant to serve. Many of these new Federal buildings were not even visibly identifiable as civic buildings.”
Responses
Both the American Institute of Architects and the National Trust for Historic Preservation objected. Pulitzer prize-winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger the problem was not with classical architecture per se, but that the mandating of an official style was not fully compatible with C21st liberal democracy. The order was weakened from the original proposal and in any case is mostly symbolic.”
All new federal buildings had to be "beautiful". Beautiful of course should be interpreted as classical, said Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society and a great supporter of traditional architecture. “Americans have long understood that classical architecture is not only beautiful, it embodies the key values of our representative government. Such inspiring buildings connect us to our heritage and the design of federal buildings should reflect the aesthetic and symbolic preferences of the people they are built to serve, namely classical and traditional architecture. Yet since the mid-C19th, Modernist mandarins controlling government architecture have been forcing ugly designs upon us. Pres Trump stood firm for tradition and beauty in public architecture”.
Two changes have already occurred in 2020. 1] Some federal projects in neoclassical style have been initiated, but when the incoming administration takes over in Jan, Trump’s order may be deleted. 2] The terms of four commissioners of the U.S Commission of Fine Arts expired in Nov 2019 and the Trump administration already appointed Shubow and two others for four-year terms! What a nightmare :(