University of Southern California School of Architecture Dean Milton Curry shares his thoughts on the recently proposed "Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again" executive order. Shown: Aerial view of the Federal Triangle district in Washington, D.C. Image courtesy of Harris & Ewing collection at the Library of Congress.

Milton S. F. Curry, Dean of the University of Southern California School of Architecture, shares his perspective on the recently proposed "Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again" draft executive order. 

The nation, as historian Benedict Anderson stated in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, becomes an imagined political community with shared norms, cultural associations, and comradeship. Washington, D.C. signifies the space of the nation by translating notions of property ownership into the grid and layout of the city/district, the invention of a vast networked civic landscape, and by modeling its Federal architecture after European colonizers’ classical models. Yet the United States is not unique - we share with other nations that were both victims of colonization and colonizers themselves, the vestiges of that colonization. That colonization - in the form of landmarks of enslavement and carceral subjugation, symbols of justice that performed injustice, and buildings that instantiated the cultures and mores of empires thousands of miles away - cannot be erased yet should not be replicated in the architectures of those that come after these violent periods of war and national contestation.

colonization [...] cannot be erased yet should not be replicated in the architectures of those that come after these violent periods of war and national contestation.

President Trump’s draft White House Executive Order, “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” proposes that Federal Buildings be of a classical style and act as powerful symbols of the nation and State. The myth is of a Federal Architecture program that has gone rogue by embracing fashionable architectural styles and ideas that subvert the ideals of the nation. In fact, the Guiding Principles of 1962 outlining the guidelines for Federal buildings clearly states, “The development of an official style must be avoided.” The General Services Administration Design Excellence Guidelines, developed in 1994 in an effort to refresh the 1962 guidelines, are responsible for architectural commissions by some of the nation’s leading architects - including Thom Mayne / Morphosis Architects, SOM Architects, Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, and many others. Among the innovations - a radical re-thinking of the functionality and efficiency of these office buildings, border stations and courthouses; introduction of more of a human scale of interior spaces and amenities; more activated and publicly accessible courtyards and civic spaces of gathering; and the increased usage of public art and sculpture. A common feature in many of the new courthouses built under the new protocols are courtrooms with natural daylighting and more intimate spaces in which to convene juries and members of the court. In Federal office buildings such as Morphosis’ Federal Office Building in San Francisco - a metal-skinned building with unconventional vertical circulation incorporated natural daylighting and through-floor ventilation - was constructed at a time when “sustainability” was just becoming a known term. Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for The New York Times, stated in 2007 that “The building may one day be remembered as the crowning achievement of the General Services Administration’s Design Excellence program, founded more than a decade ago to remedy the atrocious architecture routinely commissioned for government offices.”

Whether deconstructionist or Brutalist in style, these and other post-war interpretations of Federal architecture are now an integral part of our cities and our collective cultural landscape. In fact, the post-war modernist period produced many innovative experimentations that remain with us today - including the use of concrete and steel as structural materials, the invention of the glass curtain wall for office buildings, new typologies of urban housing, and more inclusive programming for public and civic buildings, such as public libraries and schools.

The universal post-colonial aspirations of utilizing new-found freedom to express a nation and its people’s new identity as a self-governing entity is shared with many nations in the Americas - such as Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, etc. - and other nations across the world. The diversity of indigenous interpretations of modern architecture in these nations is the subject of rich and nuanced cultural scholarship that also exposes the tensions of adhering to a singular genre of modern architecture or heroizing European models of how to implement modern architecture at the scale of the city. Brasilia in Brazil and Chandigarh in India are the two most poignant examples of capital cities using the power of modern architecture to break from the architectural style of their colonizer. Though flawed, they presented confident and bold projections of what a new architecture for the new state could be. 

Brasilia in Brazil and Chandigarh in India are the two most poignant examples of capital cities using the power of modern architecture to break from the architectural style of their colonizer. Though flawed, they presented confident and bold projections of what a new architecture for the new state could be.

The interpretation of the draft White House Executive Order is that its divisive language and intent will politicize what has been a bipartisan ideal of making Federal buildings contemporary in their function, efficiency, and service to the public - with the full participation of their users and within a professionally adjudicated process by which the professional acumen of architects becomes integral to the reflective deliberations of the GSA and those empowered with project delivery. As egalitarian scholar Elizabeth Anderson has stated, developing and maturing into a truly egalitarian democracy requires flattening the social hierarchy amongst fellow citizens. What can be more populist, more democratic than seizing upon the contemporary moment to utilize our public works as a celebratory expression of who we are and who we desire to become.

Architecture is culture in the making - it is an accessible way in which to share common values and become intertwined with the ideological project of modernity, namely to set aside our individualism long enough to realize our own self-identity in the embodiment of other fellow humans, even those whom we do not know.