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Dec 22, 2020 07:24 AM EST
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday with the aim to ensure federal buildings display beautiful architecture. He found classical architecture to be more favorable than modernist designs. Beautiful Federal Buildings
Trump s executive order did not denote the standards for buildings to be considered beautiful, indicating that new federal buildings should be of classical design but not commanding that style.
The designs of federal buildings were necessitated for classical and other traditional architecture to be the standard style for new structures in Washington, DC, and promote beautiful exteriors for federal sites throughout the United States. It takes particular aim at Deconstructivism and Brutalism, claiming that buildings in such styles have lured criticism.
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The Federal Building and Courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Timothy Hursley
President Trump, a former builder, signed an executive order Monday intended to promote neo-classical architecture as the official style for federal buildings in Washington, DC., and at new federal courthouses elsewhere.
The order defines classical as including Neoclassical, Georgian, Greek Revival, Gothic and other traditional styles
. It also establishes a new President s Council on Improving Federal Civic Architecture, which is intended to ensure proposed federal buildings are beautiful and reflective of the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American system of self-government.
The order cites ancient Greece, ancient Rome and language from the constitution of the Italian city of Siena in 1309 as preferred models.
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Updated at 12:30pm ET
Back in February, President Trump set the architectural world reeling with a call for traditional designs for new federal buildings. He proposed an executive order, called “Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” which took an out-with-the-new, in-with-the-old approach to architecture, calling modern federal buildings constructed over the last five decades “undistinguished,” “uninspiring” and “just plain ugly.”
That proposed order is now a reality. Retitled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” it begins with a paean to “beautiful public architecture,” before moving on to a litany of disapproval aimed at modernist federal buildings.
It’s true that modernism abounds in D.C. Standing on a street corner near the National Mall, there’s actually a mishmash of architectural styles. Let’s talk about three of them: In the distance, the gleaming white pillars of the U.S. Capitol dome, the kind of classical architect