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Trump’s ‘Beautiful Buildings’ EO Meets the Wrecking Ball

America needs good classical architects more than a presidential signature.
Corinthian,Columns

Last week on Wednesday, Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking Trump’s executive order mandating classical architecture (rather broadly defined) as the default style for new federal buildings. Trump signed the order on December 21, 2020. That didn’t take long. I wrote briefly about Trump’s order over at New Urbs, and I pretty much stand by my opinion then. (Again, not much time has passed.) The idea of building more classical buildings is inoffensive, and most people do seem to prefer traditional styles to modern styles, though most people probably don’t hold very strong preferences here.

The common objection is that the government should not mandate a particular style, because architects are artists and a government mandate smacks of censorship. On the other hand, buildings, particularly federal buildings, are public art, and are part of a broader urban or built fabric. The idea that an architect should be able to design whatever he wants, no matter its impact on its surroundings, smacks of a me-first libertarianism that most critics of the Trump EO would likely reject in other contexts. Which raises my other point: Trump was a poor vehicle for something like this, and it would be a shame for something as removed from politics as this to become another culture war issue.

But the strongest objection to the order isn’t from those who dislike classical architecture, but those who do: America has a dearth of good classically trained architects. Perhaps federal demand will incentivize new supply, but more likely, firms will end up producing ordinary buildings with substandard classical skins. Check out this 2017 piece from Lewis McCrary on Notre Dame’s architecture school, which is one of the few today teaching classic styles in real depth. We’ll need a lot more of that, and we should have a lot more of that, if these styles and methods are going to shine today.

And to these points, we can also add that making policy via executive order is inherently unstable, and orders on important public matters like this practically beg to be reversed and counter-reversed by each successive administration. If politics is downstream from culture, then executive orders are downstream from politics, and if we’re looking for some sort of renewal, we’ll need more than a presidential signature, of either or any party.

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