That's more like it
The Architectural Record has obtained a preliminary draft of the order, entitled 'Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again', under which "the White House would require rewriting the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture, issued in 1962, to ensure that "the classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style" for new and upgraded federal buildings.
The order would reverse favoring Brutalist and Deconstructivist styles advocated by the General Service Administration's (GSA) Design Excellence Program and would instead favor the architectural styles of "democratic Athens" and "republican Rome."
The executive order trashes brutalist buildings such as the U.S. Federal Building in San Francisco, the U.S. Courthouse in Austin, Texas, and the Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. U.S. Courthouse in Miami as having "little aesthetic appeal."
The draft order asserts that Brutalist and Deconstructivist styles "fail to satisfy" the requirements of building designs to provide "dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability."
In a development that almost certainly isn't a coincidence, GSA's Chief Architect and Director of the Design Excellence Program, David Insinga, resigned his post last week.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the European Union is taking the opposite approach, with the globalist body set to enforce regulations that make historic rebuilding illegal.
"When new parts/elements are necessary, a project shall use contemporary design adding new value and/or use while respecting the existing ones," states a new EU directive.
As I highlight in the video below, modernist architecture is cancer. Hopefully Trump's executive order can spur other governments in the west to take the same approach.
Reader Comments
I'd also like to see rent control to benefit small business owners. I once worked in a restaurant which was in an historical building owned by the city, and the rent was based on the profit of the business, so the owner could never get ahead, because as soon as profits increased, the rent went up. And somehow the city couldn't figure out why they couldn't keep any businesses in the building.
I don't hate all modern building designs, but I absolutely loathe how the government buildings has to look like an alien construct of oppression that would fit right into the world of 1984.
While many of the styles I listed are "classic" in one sense, they are not "Classical" architecture. And I don't mind Classical architecture, but I'd rather spend my tax dollars on things other than the granite and marble often required in those buildings. And while I despise neighborhood associations, where I think they are good is when you have an historic neighborhood and the association prevents something completely out of place from being constructed. Beyond that, neighborhood/homeowners/condo associations can take their authoritarianism and get fucked.
(And, perhaps, you are, at this very instant, and nigh verbatim, writing this final clause, too.)
Great minds, and all that. RC