On his first day of his second term in office, President Trump signed dozens of orders and memoranda that outlined his positions on everything from foreign policy and immigration to gender identity, working from home, and TikTok. The contents of the executive actions—which have already triggered lawsuits—echo comments and promises he’s made since first hitting the campaign trail in 2015. And so it comes as no surprise that he revived another one of his obsessions: making federal buildings “beautiful” by prescribing traditional and classical architecture as the default style.
In a two-paragraph presidential memorandum titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Architecture,” Trump instructed the administrator of the General Services Association, Stephen Ehikian, the former VP of AI products at Salesforce, to submit recommendations for ways to “advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.”
You might recall that in his first term, Trump issued an 2,500-word executive order that proclaimed classical and traditional architecture to be the preferred style of federal buildings, and detailed a hot-or-not list of structures deemed beautiful (The Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol) and ugly (The San Francisco Federal Building, the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse in Miami). Trads took a gleeful victory lap. Reputable architects condemned the notion of a prescriptive aesthetic. Biden eventually revoked the order when he took office in 2021.
Did we just rewind a nearly decade in political rhetoric? In some ways, Trump’s executive order reaches even further back into history. Classical architecture has a long history of serving as a political tool, particularly for authoritarian governments who sought to legitimize their rule by mimicking the style of Greek and Roman empires.
It’s not entirely clear how the memorandum will specifically affect architecture since it instructs the new GSA administrator to consider revisions to the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture, a set of design standards that the government uses to “ensure that public buildings represent the interests and aspirations of the American people.” Originally drafted in the 1960s, the principles state that “the development of an official style must be avoided. Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government, and not vice versa.” A spokesperson from the American Institute of Architects told Fast Company that “the 2020 White House Executive Order required input from the Fine Arts Commission, but the new directive issued Monday operates internally without needing additional approval.”
By requesting what is essentially a reversal of this long-standing core tenet, Trump is asking public buildings to represent his interests and aspirations. If the GSA wants to approve a federal building that deviates from regional, traditional, or classical styles (which are conveniently the aesthetics of Trump’s own properties, from his neoclassical New York City penthouse to his Spanish Revival Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida) before it submits the new policy recommendations, it will have to notify Trump, the memo states.
It’s the perspective of a micro-managing real estate developer intent on inspecting every change order. Meanwhile, Ehikian wrote in an email that he intends to prioritize efficiency at the GSA and “remove extremist Green New Deal and ESG (environmental, social and governance) requirements from federal building construction, leasing and procurement to prioritize economic efficiency over ideological mandates.”
Trump’s developer mindset revealed itself again as he signed other executive orders. A reporter asked Trump about the war in Gaza and if he’s confident about maintaining a ceasefire and he replied no before shifting his focus. “I looked at a picture of Gaza,” Trump responded from his desk in the Oval Office. “Gaza is like a massive demolition site. That place is—it’s gotta be rebuilt in a different way…It’s a phenomenal location. On the sea. Best weather. Everything is good. Some beautiful things can be done with it.”
Ever the opportunist, Trump can’t seem to shake the mindset of his pre-presidential profession even as his administration is confronted with higher stakes issues.
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