US President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, arrive for a welcome celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Jan. 19, 2017.
Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Trump Wants ‘Beautiful’ Architecture. You Decide What That Is.
For decades, the US government has built a lot of depressing modern buildings. Is the president wrong to want to change things?
Amid the blizzard of executive orders President Donald Trump has issued in his return to office — from the significant (gutting federal diversity programs) to the overly ambitious (“Iron Dome for America”) to the downright silly (Gulf of America, anyone?) — one that’s baffling even by Trumpian standards may have slipped past your attention: “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.”
This diktat isn’t exactly new: It’s a reaffirmation of an EO that Trump issued in 2020 but which President Joe Biden put on hold. It calls for future public buildings to “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.” That’s a tall task for any building, no matter how high its Corinthian columns.