Trump's architecture mandate won't make America's federal buildings great again

For decades, Donald Trump has left his mark on architecture by slapping his name onto the towers he builds as a real estate developer.

But now, as president, Trump threatens to leave a larger, more indelible mark on one aspect of the nation's architecture.

On Day One of his new presidency, Trump issued a memorandum that gives the U.S. General Service Administration — the agency that constructs and maintains federal buildings — 60 days to submit to him a list of design recommendations that includes those that "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."

Respecting regional architecture when designing federal buildings is fine. Indeed the GSA does this already.

But Trump's call to give preference to traditional and classical designs could wind up putting the kibosh on these approaches, and saddle us (and countries where U.S. embassies will be built) with ungainly new buildings struggling to mimic those of ancient Rome or 18th century America.

And most troubling, the policy makes it possible for Trump to use the relative permanency of federal architecture to further express his regressive "Make America great again" stance.

Mandate ‘stifles innovation’

Chicago architect Carol Ross Barney designed the Oklahoma Federal Building that replaced the structure that was blown up in 1995 by terrorist Timothy McVeigh, killing 168 people.

Barney designed the building with an assortment of safety features including thick concrete walls, blast-resistant glass and pavement that can collapse under the weight of a heavy vehicle.

Yet the building is open, airy and welcoming — which is no small feat, given the security concerns that had to be juggled.

But it at least it didn't have to carry the added burden of having to look like the Parthenon or Jefferson's Monticello.

"It's way out of the mainstream of architectural thought," Barney said Tuesday of Trump's mandate. "And it reduces architecture to decoration. It reduces its value. I just think it's so obvious to me, working every day on public buildings or public spaces, that this doesn't even get to understanding the power of design or the importance of public spaces in buildings."

The American Institute of Architects issued a statement Tuesday on Trump's memorandum.

"AIA has strong concerns that mandating architecture styles stifles innovation and harms local communities," the group representing 100,000 licensed architects said.

Who’s Trump to talk?

Much of what Trump proposed is a rehash of an executive order from his first presidency that called for more classically designed federal edifices while largely condemning the structures built in the 1960s and after.

President Joe Biden fortunately rescinded the order.

And with good reason. Federal buildings have been among the country's finest ranks of architecture in recent decades, using good contemporary design to express the democratic ideals of openness and transparency.

The GSA has largely built to those principles since Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan sketched out the "Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture" when he was a young staffer in President John F. Kennedy's administration.

Those guidelines, expanded and codified, have given the nation buildings like Mies van der Rohe's stellar midcentury Federal Center and plaza in downtown Chicago, or the glassy and sustainable new Los Angeles U.S. Courthouse designed by SOM.

There have been some clunkers in the mix, though, particularly the Brutalist FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. — a building as imposing and unfriendly-looking as the long-term FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, for which it was once named.

But what has Trump given us, design-wise?

As a Manhattan real estate developer, he was overly fond of constructing garish, mirrored-glass towers.

And even when gifted with a good design and prime location with Chicago's Trump Tower, he still loused it up in 2014 when — in an architectural double play of crass self-promotion and bad taste — he bolted his surname onto the facade and spoiled both the building and downtown views of the Chicago River in the process.

With a background like that, Trump and his devotees in government are the absolute last people who should be shaping the policy for federal building design.

Trump should leave well enough alone.

Lee Bey is architecture critic for the Sun-Times and appears on ABC7 News Chicago. He is also a member of the Editorial Board.

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