Trump's Architecture Executive Order

Should federal buildings be brutalist concrete?

From the New York Times’ news section:

Trump Signs Executive Order to Make ‘Federal Architecture Beautiful Again’

The order, which affects buildings like federal courthouses and agency headquarters, encourages classical styles rather than modernist aesthetics.

By Zachary Small

Aug. 28, 2025

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that requires federal buildings in Washington to maintain a classical style of Greco-Roman architecture associated with the marble columns and austere hallways of the Supreme Court and U.S. Capitol.

The new guidelines, which the White House has framed as “making federal architecture beautiful again,” also discourage federal construction projects nationwide from choosing modernist styles like Brutalism.

“Because of their proven ability to meet these requirements, classical and traditional architecture are preferred modes of architectural design,” the executive order said. It added, “Major emphasis should be placed on the choice of designs that embody architectural excellence.” …

“Architecture should be of its moment,” said Liz Waytkus, the executive director of Docomomo US, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving 20th-century architecture. “It seems the current administration wants to look back and not forward.”

The moment is 2025 not 1955.

It’s fascinating how obsessed contemporary academic architecture is with justifying the distant past. Academic architects are loath to admit that they screwed up in the postwar era by glorifying bad modernist/brutalist architecture.

The best study of what the public likes in architecture is likely the 2007 survey by the American Institute of Architects that asks Americans to rank 248 buildings nominated by architects.

Among the great top 50 …

Paywall here: