President Donald Trump never signed that executive order, which would have banned modernist designs for new federal buildings. After a spate of outrage — it was roundly condemned by the American Institute of Architects, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the dean of architecture at the famously traditional University of Notre Dame and at least 11,000 architects who wrote to the White House — the order faded from view amid the many other crises of 2020. Last week, Trump lost his reelection bid, making the executive order a dead letter.
But the forces that his White House set in motion could outlive his administration: The GSA appears to have adopted a modernism ban, without any authorization in place. What seemed to be a pipe dream for admirers of classical architecture back in February now looks like procurement policy at the federal agency that manages office space and needs for the U.S. government. Design is already underway in Alabama for what might be Trump’s first mandatory classical courthouse. [...]
A classical mandate is also potentially limiting in terms of selecting qualified candidates for federal projects, which are often complex briefs with unique security and logistics needs. One firm, Jenkins Peer, which has prior federal experience renovating a courthouse in Charlotte, was shortlisted for both the Fort Lauderdale and Huntsville courthouses. Payne Design Group, which won the GSA bid for the Huntsville project, is a three-person firm, according to the sales intelligence service Dun & Bradstreet. The federal contracting site GovTribe lists just one federal contract for Payne Design — the Huntsville courthouse, a choice $3.7 million award. Otherwise the firm has largely designed traditional churches and schools in Alabama and Georgia. [...]
The strictly left-versus-right, modern-versus-classical argument reflects an old-fashioned view of architecture, an artifact from design salons of yesteryear. It’s at odds with the conversation in Europe, where policymakers have turned to the Bauhaus school for inspiration for a new aesthetic movement focused on achieving the goal of decarbonizing the continent’s building stock. In the U.S., today’s forward-thinking debates about design and planning center on social and environmental justice. Even the notion that classicism is fundamentally conservative is mistaken.
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