U.S. Capitol Building - photo by Martin Falbisoner [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
The President of the United States wants to make classical Greek
and Roman architecture the only state-sanctioned architecture for all future federal
buildings, and he wields the power to make it so. Demonstrating again his
penchant for chaos, President Trump is set to enact an executive order whose bigly overreach
will be impactful to communities across the country.
Predictably, many architects, architectural pundits, and the
American Institute of Architects expressed alarm and outrage, roundly
criticizing the proposed executive order as soon as it appeared. The AIA immediately issued a statement, saying it (and by implication its
membership) strongly opposes uniform style mandates for federal architecture, averring
that architecture should reflect our rich nation’s diverse places, thought, culture,
and climates. And of course, it should. The problem is the widespread condemnation
plays directly into the President’s hands.
I suspect outrage from the architectural profession is precisely one
response President Trump was hoping for. Whether he actually signs the
executive order is now immaterial because simply drafting it has achieved much
of the effect he sought. The President’s followers denigrate many of my
colleagues in the architecture profession as members of a liberal “cultural
elite.” Architects, while not politically homogeneous, do mostly fit the bill,
and the AIA’s reflexive (albeit necessary) response to the proposed executive
order only serves to sustain the narrative that we are out of touch with average
citizens.
Trump speaks to the resentments that galvanize his supporters. He
does this by starkly delineating camps—you’re either with him or you’re not—and
deploying a rhetoric of divisiveness. The wording of the executive order is meant
to appeal to a specific audience, and only secondarily to a broader population
who shares a disaffection for the examples of modern, contemporary architecture
that fail to speak to them. For that primary audience, the executive order is
yet another coded “dog whistle,” a thinly veiled appeal to those who long for an
American culture they understand and relate to, to the exclusion or diminution
of others that are not their own. He may not be the “very stable genius” he
claims to be, but Trump and his handlers have masterfully harnessed his ego and
instincts to nurture disturbing undercurrents.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with classical architecture as a
style. A classical design can be as inept, ugly, and dysfunctional as any other
building. It can also be astoundingly beautiful and entirely appropriate in the
right context. Context aside, the problem with a mandated, state-sanctioned form
of classical architecture is its historical connotations, particularly those we
associate with fascist regimes. Hitler’s Nazi Germany promoted a variant of
neoclassical architecture as an “authentic” expression of German identity. Benito
Mussolini favored Rationalist Architecture, a monumental, very much
stripped-down style as the official vocabulary of Italy’s National Fascist
Party. Trump and others who advocate traditional, classical architecture derived
from ancient European precedents as somehow authentically American ominously
echo the nativist ideology espoused by some of history’s most notorious
dictators.
In his article for Forbes, Juan Sebastian Pinto nailed it by characterizing
the “stylization of politics [as] one of the most dangerous indications of
totalitarianism,” and that “if anything should not have a style, it’s
the architecture of the American state.”
As the AIA noted in its plea to its members, design decisions
should be left to the designer and the community, not bureaucrats, and not plutocrats
in Washington, DC. All architectural styles have value and all communities have
the right to weigh in on the government buildings meant to serve them.
Wayne L. Morse Federal Courthouse - Photo by M.O. Stevens [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]
Eugene’s own Wayne Lyman Morse Federal Courthouse would, of course,
look much different if its architect had been obliged to design in an overtly classical
idiom. While some consider the idiosyncratic courthouse as designed by Thom
Mayne of Morphosis to be alien to Eugene, try to imagine a porticoed and
pedimented marble edifice of equal size in its place. In my opinion, our
federal courthouse is more authentic to Eugene as well as the American identity
because it does reflect the freedom of thought and expression that are essential
to democracy.
This blog post is by far my most political to date. I don’t like dipping
my foot into these waters, but it bothers me to see architecture weaponized to
achieve political ends. It bothers me too to see people so distracted by the
paralyzingly partisan and polarized discourse that has replaced informed debate
these days. Architecture is important, but the Trump Administration is
cynically employing architecture to advance a political agenda and distract us
from actions it seeks to hide in plain sight, including a willful and criminal avoidance
of its responsibility to address calamitous climate change, social injustices, the
provision of affordable health care, and the ticking timebomb that is the
federal deficit.
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