Trump's 203rd executive order seeks to establish "traditional architecture" as America's official architectural brand.
US president Donald Trump waited until his final full month in office to make a new rule dictating the look of federal buildings. Trump’s 203rd executive order, titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” seeks to establish “traditional architecture,” exemplified in Greek and Roman antiquity, as America’s official architectural brand. Backed by the National Civic Arts Society, a Washington-based group that promotes classical arts and architecture, the law is a rebuke of modernism.
Listed in the executive order are preferred building styles like Neoclassical, Georgian, Beaux-Arts, Art Deco, Gothic, Romanesque, Pueblo Revival, and Spanish Colonial. Any designs that deviate will have to go through additional hurdles to get approved. A newly-established council, chaired by a member of the Commission of Fine Arts, will have oversight over the matter. With two women on the commission finishing their term this year, the panel will be comprised of seven men.
Writer Deane Madsen, who runs the blog BrutalistDC, is among the many voices in architecture circles appalled by Trump’s mandate. “I take this pretty personally,” he tells Quartz. (Brutalist architecture was specifically called out by the executive order as not conforming to the new rules.) “While I’m aware that loving Brutalist buildings seems to be an unpopular position, it should be clear that attempting to exert control over architectural style is less about reducing the emergence of unpopular architecture than it is about a political power-grab over aesthetics.”
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