Not Tired of Winning Yet CII
Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again
The White House is reportedly preparing an executive order that would direct all new federal buildings to be built in the classical architectural style.
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
The draft rule goes on to say
“For more than a century and a half America’s Federal architecture produced beautiful and beloved buildings. Typically, though not exclusively, classical in design, buildings such as the White House, the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the Treasury Department, and the Lincoln Memorial have become international symbols of democratic self-government.”
For visual reference. here is an example of Brutalist style:
Here is Deconstructivist style
Here is the classical style of Democratic Athens, inspired by the Parthenon
And of Republican Rome, inspired by the Pantheon
My question:
Of these buildings, which do you think attracts more tourist dollars into the capital city of the Republic?
My comment:
I may not be getting tired of winning, but it is getting hard to keep up with the winning this last fortnight. When Trump said we would say it was ‘too much winning’ if he were elected, I thought it was just his normal P.T. Barnum-style braggadocio.
Who would have thought such an absurd campaign promise would be kept?
Mr Trump also claimed in one speech to be keeping more promises than he made. While logically impossible, it is rhetorically truthful a statement. He made no promise to beautify the architecture of Federal buildings, and yet it is in keeping with his Populist patriotism.
Of course, to the block-skulled, square-faced creatures of Bizarro World, fair is foul and fouls is fair.
For reference, when researching this column, the search returns from mainstream media read as follows:
- Critics aghast at proposal to make classical America’s ‘default’ architectural style
- Trump’s Bizarre Plan to Make Architecture Classical Again — A fringe group of traditionalists persuades the White House to take its side.
- A Modern Architecture Ban for Federal Buildings
The Leftist tears flowing from the evildoers and dirty smear merchants may also be reaching a limit. Even the malice of so dark a heart as mine has a brim: in such misery these folk wallow, where everything is a pain and and open wound to them, almost provoke one to pity. A stately building, to them, is ghastly, bizarre, and unjust.
It is almost as if their consciences were pricking them, and making every pleasing thing, every victory and advance for the nation, all the good news economic, military, and diplomatic, like a thorn in the eye.
The peace they seek is not in the aimless violence for which they yearn, nor in the utopian mirage they chase into the barren, scorching sands.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
