Is neoclassicism about to make a big comeback?
It looks likely, as a new executive order under consideration by President Donald Trump attempts to make classicism the "preferred and default style" for new and upgraded federal buildings.
According to an exclusive report by Architectural Record, the predictably named "Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again" executive order would seek to reposition classically inspired architecture as the country's default public building style. The shift comes in opposition to the longstanding style agnosticism displayed by public buildings in recent decades following the creation of the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture directive crafted in 1962 by former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Moynihan's directive—which states that "The development of an official style must be avoided" and that "Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government and not vice versa"—has resulted in a wide ranging set of innovative public building projects that embrace contemporary design strategies and material approaches, including the SOM-designed New United States Court House in Los Angeles, Morphosis's San Francisco Federal Building, and the United States Courthouse in Austin, Texas designed by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects.
But as many architectural observers might note, President Trump's taste in architecture hews more toward the pedimented than the streamlined, as the classically ordered, chintzy-but-low-ceilinged interiors of his Trump Tower condominium make clear. According to Architectural Record, which has reviewed a copy of the draft executive order, recent federal building projects carried out by the General Services Administration have been unable to imbue "our national values into Federal buildings" and that moving forward, styles like Brutalism and Deconstructivism will "fail to satisfy" the new proposed requirements "and shall not be used." The document, according to Architectural Record, goes on to explicitly call out the Morphosis-designed Federal Building and the Austin courthouse as having "little aesthetic appeal."
The shift comes as the Chief Architect and Director of the Design Excellence Program, David Insigna, resigned his post last week and as the president adds a collection of new architectural classicists to the United States Commission of Fine Arts, the body that weighs in on the design of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.
In addition, President Trump recently named airport engineer J. Brett Blanton as the new Architect of the Capitol. Blanton was sworn in last week and will lead, among many responsibilities, the renovations of the Cannon House Office Building Renewal Project, a $100 million set of upgrades for a 111-year-old Beaux Arts style office complex originally designed by New York City architects Carrère and Hastings.
The President’s potential executive order comes as the latest salvo in an increasingly complex intellectual battle over the merits of traditional and modern architectures that has played out online over recent years.
Online, traditional architecture enthusiasts, white suprematists, and other groups have aligned their shared passions for classical aesthetics with sordid nationalist politics to consistently weaponize classical motifs under a variety of nativist mantles. Increasingly, classical orders, fluted columns, and dentilled cornices have come to symbolize not simply solid, timeless architectural motifs but also the “Whites Only” idealized version of the past these groups seek to celebrate today. As in other facets of federal policy, President Trump’s long-running embrace of nativist politics is, with the potential executive order, gesturing toward and growing to absorb these discourses into the country’s legal and regulatory apparatuses.
As Archinect reported last week, the relationship between architects and federal building projects has a long history in the United States and has often served to define both the image of the nation and the practice of architecture itself.
The period after the American Civil War represents a key moment in this history, as does the following period under the New Deal. During this latter period, as the nation’s popular Beaux Arts architectural styles jostled with ascendant Streamline and Moderne stylings for popular relevance and appeal, the federal government, through large-scale public works and countless public-private partnerships with architects in nearly every corner of the country via the Public Works Administration, brought into being a new style that fused the two competing modes: Depression Moderne.
Architects like Paul Cret, Waddy Butler Wood, and McKim, Mead, and White, worked to fuse the classical proportioning and decorative flourish of the Beaux Arts styles with modern steel frame and concrete construction to create buildings that strove simultaneously to embody the lofty ideals of the resurgent American government with the no-frills and people-powered economic promise of the New Deal.
Of these architects it was perhaps Paul Cret who had the most long lasting and impactful career though his work on the Federal Reserve Headquarters complex in Washington, D.C. and on a variety of war memorials he helped to create and design.
Ultimately, Cret’s influence would perhaps be too great, as in the decade that followed, notorious Nazi architect Albert Speer famously co-opted Cret’s uniquely American design contributions to design the Nazi regime’s aesthetic building agenda, including the Reichsparteitagsgelände Nazi rally grounds in Nuremberg, Germany.
With Trump’s embrace of classical architecture, perhaps the influence has come full circle.
149 Comments
"The shift comes in opposition to the longstanding style agnosticism displayed by public buildings in recent decades"
If by agnosticism you mean an almost entirely modernist domination of style in public architecture, then sure. The reason Moynihan stated "The development of an official style must be avoided" was simply to introduce actual agnosticism, which is why he also wrote the Federal government should build buildings that “reflect the dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability of the American National Government”, because of the near total domination of Brutalism at the time. It's good to remember that this was a time when traditional cities where being bulldozed by the acre. https://www.ncpc.gov/news/item/52/
It's not a coincidence that many government buildings were built in the style that was dominant at the time that many government buildings were built. That's what style-agnostic policy gets you. To create a diversity of styles would require a deliberate focus on bringing in a diversity of architects.
I knew the first person to comment would be our version of Shitbow.
Justin Shubow, Trump's first appointment to the Committee for the Re-Beautification of Federal Architecture and president of the National Civic Art Society takes on contemporary architecture, targeting Aaron Betsky, in Forbes here:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Actually, Shubow was criticizing Betsky, who was aggressively targeting people who dared to speak out and suggest that there might be something going awry in the world of avant-garde architecture.
Actually, I think Betsky has a point.
"The truth is that architecture is not made by or for “a wide spectrum of the population.” It is made for those who have the means to commission it, and reflects their values and priorities. If some architecture looks strange and is engaged in experimentation, it is because the only way architects have to make something that has a chance to escape from that affirmation of the social, economic, and political status quo is to make spaces that open up, forms that question or stretch our expectations, and buildings that build in delights, from amenities to visual pleasures, that the clients do not necessarily need—though they may desire them in the end. Beauty of a deep and satisfying kind is what good architects often have to sneak into commissions.
Architecture, in other words, is either the dull affirmation of what we have, or it is an attempt to make our world better. It succeeds not by DNA-based forms or mystical appeals to the tastes of the public, but through hard work in the real world."
The highlighted portion I agree with, wholeheartedly, the next sentence I take issue with, because I don't think that has to be true, at least the first half.
There was a time when there was a broad consensus among the elite commissioning buildings, the architects who designed them, and the public about what made great cities, and what was beautiful. This is sadly passed away.
That has nothing to do with architects, or architecture, and has everything to do with conservatism and neo-liberal policies around education.
No it doesn't. You really should hit the books b3. Your starting to sound like our version of a Trump supporter.
Actually, trad-arch is hot right now, the way Nazi Snowflakes are hot, perhaps it's you and the trads that need education.
I hate that Gehry quote that“98% of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit." It's useless. No two people using that quote as an indictment of architecture would agree on which 2% of the built environment is not shit, nevermind that their preferred 2% is definitely not what Gehry prefers.
Not for groups greater than 2.
Here's a log to throw on this fire:
"Paul Cret, great Americanized French architect, constructed from a simplified classical language, in which he wanted the spirit of Roman imperial classicism to waft, a supra-historical and a-contextual language to be proposed to the glories of the American nation: modern, imperial and culturally inclusive"
Lucio Barbera, La citta Radicale di Ludovico Quadroni, 2016, page 238
If Speer riffed on Cret, is it fair to Cret to consign him to architectural purgatory?
How is Cret being consigned to purgatory?
Until this week, I had never heard of Cret. While researching Cret, I soon found several academics who wondered why Cret has been excised from American architectural history.
What up. Pauly-C in da house.
Wow! Oliver Sacks has described the final stage of a rare form of syphilis that produces giddy exuberance in patients. This architecture looks like a manifestation of that condition!
If you've never heard of Cret, that doesn't mean he's been excised from history.
Paul Philippe Cret was a great designer. And our beloved, Louis Kahn was both taught by him and worked for him.
Please see also: Totalitarian Architecture
https://www.slideshare.net/SimonFoo6/lecture9-totalitarian-architecture
"Online, traditional architecture enthusiasts, white suprematists, and other groups have aligned their shared passions for classical aesthetics with sordid nationalist politics to consistently weaponize classical motifs under a variety of nativist mantles. Increasingly, classical orders, fluted columns, and dentilled cornices have come to symbolize not simply solid, timeless architectural motifs but also the “Whites Only” idealized version of the past these groups seek to celebrate today."
This is probably the most racist screed I have ever read.
My heart bleeds for you and your wounded ego.
Pete is the best Pete.
I agree it's quite a screed about racists.
Just because you're not aware of the online overlap between trad. architecture support and white supremacy doesn't mean it's not there. It's there.
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2018/08/how-architecture-themed-twitter-accounts-became-magnet-white
So if a citizen who happens to be an Africian-American supports classical architecture for public buildings he is a racist, and a white suprematist? Maybe just an 'Uncle Tom'? Any other insults you would care to throw his way? Uneducated? Unlettered? He isn't allowed to think the Boston City Hall is atrocious because of his skin color?
All my skinfolk ain't kinfolk.
Zora Neale Huston
Your words, Volunteer. Not mine.
Here's a classical buildings in Washington DC by an African American architect. These are folks who proved the racists wrong but now seem suspect in the very cancel culture Barak Obama warned about. I remember in school some black kids getting called Oreo's for speaking correct English and studying hard. Imagine such ignorance...
Volunteer, stop. You're being hyperbolic. The key issue here: nobody is saying Classical architecture is *bad*, but some people are saying *only* Classical architecture is good. We can obviously have both - unless a dictator says we can't.
Donna, I agree with you about the Federal design guidelines. Although I personally think that the built environment would be better off if new government buildings were classically inspired, I'm not a utilitarian. I think that it's not good to have this proscribed by the government.
Having gov't buildings be obviously gov't buildings is helpful when people are trying to locate them. Having them be buildings which will last a very long time is a good idea. What they look like specifically? Who gives a shit?
However, the bizarre effort to tie traditional architecture to racism and totalitarianism is untrue and tedious. It would be just as easy for me to pull images of East Germany in the 1950s and maintain that International Style modernism is stained by totalitarian oppression.
I disagree that new government buildings should be classically inspired. There are a whole range of beautiful government buildings that aren't classical, especially from the 1830's to about 1930's when stylistic pluralism was the norm. I tend to prefer traditional styles to modernist ones, but simply decreeing classicism without proper instruction would justified the ridicule of contemporary traditionalism whose design quality pales in comparison to pre-WW2 days. Plus, if you want to be included in the party, you have to keep the door open for all comers. It's one thing to have a favorite style, it's another to want to claim it's superior to all others, however much you might think it.
Agree, Thayer.
It's almost like you'd have us believe that a whole movement toward traditional architecture hasn't been lauded as a return to classical European White values. But sure play this strawman, that no one is suggesting.
I was taught they where human values and that we where all created equal. At least that what science has shown. But if you're going to be divisive, why not note that Modernism is as European white (is there another kind?) as Classicism? That's the problem with looking at everything through race colored glasses, you can't see people as human first.
Volunteer, might help you to read about Albert Speer.
If some nutty fringe group of racists decide that classical architecture floats their boat, well, there's not much we can do about that. But it doesn't tarnish the architecture, any more than the International style modernism is tarnished by Soviet totalitarians building scores of concrete post-war buildings all over East Berlin. It cracks me up how quickly the modernists shift the conversation to Speer whenever the subject comes up.
The fact that they insist on this interpretation says all you need to know about the intellectual weakness of their position. Instigators exist on both sides of the political spectrum. They don't want us to get along. BTW b3, I like your photos and music.
To clarify - my point is not that classical architecture is bad because white supremacists like it. My point is that the recent online groundswell of support for traditional architecture is - as b3ta said - a dogwhistle for ethnonationalist types, and that this policy is similarly a dogwhistle of support for those types (intentionally or not).
In summary: Classical architecture is fine. The policy is, if not racist, then definitely grounded in racism.
What evidence do you have that "the policy" is grounded in racism? (I presume you mean the suggested policy of having future Federal buildings be classical).
I'll concede that I don't have definitive proof but that it's - in my opinion - extremely, obviously likely based on the context and the people involved. & that's enough of a standard - in my opinion - for internet comments.
Plausible deniability is the point of dogwhistles. It's like y'all never heard of Lee Atwater.
Lee Atwater was a master of it, and it definitely exists. Limbaugh , the presidential medal of whatever pushes it, and Trump is the latest manifestation. Plus throw in foreign autocrats who'd like nothing better than to wreak this wonderful experiment called America. I sure hope we get through this period without a fucking war.
FFS, the very nature of "return" is emblematic of ethnonationalist ideological thinking. If we're going to discuss a "return" to some past "glory" that in and of itself. Is a return to whiteness, the tyranny of whiteness, terrorism.
"BTW b3, I like your photos and music."
Wut?
I typed in his moniker and it came up with a flicker (photos) and a sound cloud (music) . I like the photos and the music was groovy. Definitely going to put Jacqueline Pie Francis Alex MORPH and others on my play list among.
Pie is wonderful, a real throw back. Alex I met at JFK airport, super cool, hot girlfriend.
I'd like to see staff who work in these "classical" buildings wear colonial wigs.
When someone cooks classic french cuisine, should they dress like Louis XIV?
^yes
What should those who design in a neo-Bauhaus style wear or a mid-century modernist style. The idea that artists can't be inspired by the past is silly, but this has been the state of architecture since modernism made all other styles verboten.
executive order is the opposite of inspiration.
I’m with Moynihan. There should be no official style or executive order, but we know that’s not necessary. Just look at academia where They speak of diversity when modernism is the only accepted style. This is the kind of liberal hypocrisy which gives authoritarians the room to grow.
Um. It's not Modernism, or modernism. And you're cherry picking from starchitects, so there's that.
How is it not modernism to reject all traditional architecture? Again, history books are freely available at your nearest library.
Define "traditional" architecture.
Like I said, go to a library . A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
You can't define it but claim Its supremacy.
Erik Evans - You do know that's exactly what the traditional chef's toque is, right?
Thayer-D - Double-breasted suits with wide ties, d'uh! Haven't you seen pictures of all the Bauhaus and mid-century architects?
Here is the National Facist Party headquarters designed by Giuseppi Terragni who was given the commission by Benito Mussolini. It was completed in 1936. Now it is an art gallery. While it looks like an upscale motel in Malibu and is not unattractive, it doesn't exactly scream democracy. Seems like those pesky white nationalists would glam onto this, which was actually built by facists?
You seem to be having trouble building that straw man. This might help.
The architecture of oppression.
I'm not going to defend Terragni. He did two projects for the fascists, but you're stretching credulity to attach Bauhaus and Modernism to Fascism, or Totalitarianism. If that's the route you'll take then, if we should bulldozer those buildings, then I'm for nuking DC.
Le Corbusier was a Nazi, or at least a Nazi-supporter, there is nothing to stretch. The Swiss cancelled their support of an upcoming Le Corbusier museum when his background was highlighted.
Fine.
I think a cherry picker would be a more appropriate piece of equipment for Volunteer.
Here is Vanity Fair's take on an American Nazi supporter, Phillip Johnson. Enjoy. https://www.vanityfair.com/cul...
Wiki has the Cliff Notes version: Johnson wrote in Social Justice that "Lack of leadership and direction in the state has let the one group get control who always gain power in a nation's time of weakness—the Jews," he wrote. In a letter to a friend, he said, "We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed. It was a stirring spectacle."[30]
Let's also get Charles Lindbergh.
Are there any recent examples of successful neoclassical architecture, say the last 25 years or so? I'd like to see this debate carried on by example. In Cret you see how diluted the style has become.
I'm inclined to think colonial wigs, however, will make a comeback.
Does this count as neoclassical? RAMSA has a reputation for postmodernism but I think this pulls in classical elements with nary a wink of postmodern irony. https://www.ramsa.com/projects/project/wasserstein-hall-caspersen-student-center-and-clinical-wing
Neo-neo-classical Revival? Labels aside it's a damn good building & I think a good example to follow if people want a more "conservative" building that doesn't look like a Disney pastiche.
Give pictures! Wasserstein Hall:
Defining classical/neo-classical influence is the next step—it has shifted through the ages.
18x32, I’ve read those two paragraphs a dozen times now. Fantastic descriptive writing! Delightful.
Can't comment on the legislation-side. But, these are buildings that people like to look at and be around!
Yes, people -- not architects, but people. It is important to not be deaf to the public's criticism of contemporary architecture.
"First, we must make things that."
Yeah, Civic Center Plaza is always so full of people there just for the environment and architecture.
"It is important to not be deaf to the public's criticism of contemporary architecture" Why?
I mean, I'm *highly* critical of the public's enthusiasm for the architecture of Medieval Times but should I just be quiet and give everyone faux castles because they like them?
Please don’t, because you don’t care to study them with an eye for beauty. But if someone wants a faux bauhaus office building, it’s all you. After all, it’s just a grid. God is in the details, right:?
It is important to be sensitive to what people like and want because the public has to live around buildings...
I'm not understanding the disconnect here.
Line at the end of my original post should read:
"First, we must make things that last."
I’m very sensitive to how people want to live. People like walkable neighborhoods, and streetscapes that have activity and don’t feel threatening, and human scaled details at the street with god-scaled details at the top framing the sky, and materials that feel substantial in some cases and ephemeral in others. None of this has anything to do with a particular style.
Donna, you're arguing with a particularly stubborn rock. Your time is better spent educating the educable.
Entitled “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” the draft order argues that the founding fathers embraced the classical models of “democratic Athens” and “republican Rome” for the capital’s early buildings because the style symbolized the new nation’s “self-governing ideals”
from the Architectural Record link
I don't know the politics of the writers of the draft, though can guess. I do know, however, the politics of the man who appointed them, who waged a campaign based on "draining the swamp" and making the federal government a scapegoat. I also know the last weeks that balance of power and constitutional process have been scrapped. This statement rings horribly hollow. It is a traditional stance without meaning, and the neoclassical style would exist only as a formal stamp of approval on these abuses and others to come.
The original Guiding Principles, written by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, mandated that Federal architecture “must provide visual testimony to the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American government.”
Whatever design is used, it should be based on common cultural understanding, a sense of citizenship and civic duty and shared national identity. All are dead, and we have become a nation that is horribly divided with a government that is essentially dysfunctional, that can only run up national debt, impotent to deal with the crises that face us—climate, income inequality, housing, and so on.
The majority of buildings GSA constructed during the federal modernism period of the 1960s and early 1970s reflect typical office design: functional, efficient, but not necessarily distinguished. The philosophy of the Modern movement, coupled with the pace of changing technology, gave rise to a new commercial standard, which was reflected in many public buildings of the period.
https://www.gsa.gov/real-estat...
from the GSA, Architecture and Government
One problem was our rapid growth and the growth of the federal government, which resulted in large, efficient buildings—impersonal, without distinction. The same happened to commercial buildings. It's not a fault of modernism per se—designers would have found a way to simplify, reduce, and economize otherwise, given the same pressures. Bringing government and our values to us visibly, vitally, through architecture, was the challenge, lost here.
There's another story in AR I missed:
Meanwhile, last week, the GSA’s Chief Architect and Director of the Design Excellence Program, David Insinga, resigned his post.
New residential college at Princeton, completed 2007. Named after principal donor, Meg Whitman.
Morphosis’ San Francisco Federal Building is a GSA masterpiece and deserves recognition! Mayne should sue The White House for defamation and monetary damages!
Architects saying that Morphosis' SF Courthouse is a "masterpiece" and "beautiful" is why nobody trusts architects anymore and we wind up with EO's like this latest one. It isn't a masterpiece or beautiful. It's an anti-human, wasteful wreck which insults everyone who interacts with it.
Yeah, no. I like it.
If you enjoy being insulted, that's fine. I don't.
Judge Smails, what are you doing off your yacht?
It's raining a lot in the PNW and the hull needs repainting. Has me on dry land for the moment.
Well, 18x32, I was using the term 'classical' in the broader sense to include Baroque and Gothic, as well as the Neo-Classical among other forms. Nevertheless, here is the Nashville Symphony Center building completed in 2007.
There's a subtle point here I will miss. If it were designed 80 years ago, I would say preserve it. But to design it this way now feels like a throwback, even a regression, to a style that no longer speaks to us. It's one thing to be hip and fashionable for the sake of being hip and fashionable. But to copy old styles—and this is largely a copy—is a failure of insight and imagination. In architecture the past needs to speak to the living present. This feels dead.
I agree with Gary here.
Exactly Gary, exactly.
Gary, Was Roman architecture legitimate as a copy of Greek, or Renaissance a copy of Roman, or Neo-classical a copy of Renaissance, or Beaux Arts...? Your point is completely illogical as any musician worth their salt can tell you. Is modernism today a copy of 100 year old modernism in post WW1 Germany? And this goes for every facet of human creativity. You obviously underestimate human creativity, to say nothing of having a flimsy grasp of history.
I disagree with Thayer here
I said it was a subtle question. This is a perfectly adequate building and I hope the people of Nashville are happy. In 80 years it will be held up as an object of veneration. Who knows what will be next to it? We should pick up this conversation again then.
But successful revivals pick up former styles and reinvigorate them and adapt them to contemporary values and beliefs customs and materials. This is what happened with UVA, a great example of a neoclassical revival, also my favorite. (And with it we still have to live with its horrible ironies.) The question may not concern the people of Nashville, and I won't criticize them. But it does concern people trying to come terms with architecture and deciding what to do next. This building advances nothing we didn't see 80 years ago.
"But successful revivals pick up former styles and reinvigorate them and adapt them to contemporary values and beliefs customs and materials." Not true since they had concrete, steel, and plate glass in the victorian times. "But it does concern people trying to come terms with architecture and deciding what to do next." I've got no problem deciding what to do next, it's called architecture as practiced since time immemorial. And if you really wanted to reinvigorate a former style, don't you think it would help not to censor it in academia? That's what authoritarian regimes do when they want to suppress ideas. But please let me know how the current revival of mid century modernism escapes this intellectual maze you've created out of my noble and beautiful profession, which I assume you're familiar with, right?
? Gotta punt, TD. I never defended academia (or certain members of). Nor did I defend washed up, confused, cheap modernist buildings.
Punting on my main question? Simply put, why is neo classicism less legitimate than neo modernism? In other words why, when we live in a diverse and pluralist world should we limit the range of the expression? Does this happen in any other art form?
That's right, those constrictive elements help define the differences between differing classical revivals, but not all by any means. Sometimes, a temple front is just a temple front. It's important to actually read what was written at the time of these revivals rather than rely on a history written through a modernist filter. Let me know if you find any differences between the narrative of the two.
This is a great example of how left elites lose the culture war. Instead of using institutional power to illuminate the values of modern architecture, we (and by we I mean pop media and gov bureaucrats represented by the NYT) have been pursuing mushy and generic concepts and causes like “climate” and “social justice” which have no physical anchor in reality. Then when Trump releases a dumb order, most people are like “well, he’s right, classical buildings are great and that modern library built with no budget in the late 80s sucks.”
Obviously there are nice modern federal buildings out there, and many mish-mashes of modern and classical. The SF courthouse is a masterpiece. But am also reminded on how Holl walked away from the Denver Justice Center after the difficulty of working with tight constraints. Obviously a complex issue — but I don’t think the left controlled media has done a good job of advocating for good design and not being critical enough were it falls short. Now we are in the position of pretending like all modern courthouses (quite conservative already) are great when many times they are weaker than University, private or other good modern design.
Here’s a good overview of recent courthouses. Not super great, but not bad either.
https://www.online-paralegal-degree.org/30-most-architecturally-impressive-courthouses-in-the-u-s/
Either way, somehow the left media decided that architecture was no longer important, which has to change. You can’t solve the big problems until you know how to solve the smaller ones
so, is this addition on the left classical enough for Trump? How about he atrium? It looks modern to me. Meanwhile a lot of “modern” design looks very classical.
Either way, Trump and the NYT would love to have a straw man debate over Palladio vs Soviet Bloc Modernism, one that doesn’t involve great contemporary architects like Holl, Blackwell, Ando, Ban, Zumthor, Williams/Tsien, just to name the personalities and not larger firms who also do good work but rarely for a government bureaucracy and left media that doesn’t value design at all
Scranton's Federal Building is gorgeous, and the design team who put the expansion project together are some of the most meticulous, thoughtful Architects working today. Fascinatingly, it also stands DIRECTLY across the grass and street from this:
At least the above has a personality which the recent addition to the Federal Building most certainly does not.
Your inability to fairly observe that which you do not understand is well documented on this forum.
Shall I post a hundred non-classical buildings with "personality" to point out your intentional, exhausting, and pervasive hypocrisy?
Perhaps you should consider that the Lackawanna Courthouse has been standing for 136 years while Brutalist crap in DC, like the FBI Building, which is loathed by its users, is falling apart after 45 years and is a current danger to its occupants. Perhaps you would like to do a 'sustainability' study on both and get back to us. You may think the modern addition is attractive. I think it is an insult to the taxpayers who had to pay for it.
It's been renovated. And cherry picking projects proves nothing except your biases.
Oh, and if you're from the valley it makes SO MUCH SENSE NOW.
How about an example of architecture that's conservative, mature, and stately without being a hacky neoclassical simulacrum?
That is a relatively nice composition. But the parapet is awkward without a cornice. Look at all that blank brick -- unbalanced!
I see what you're saying but I don't really mind it. Also that simplicity fits right into the larger body of Henry Cobb's work.
I think volunteer is Robert Stern's left nut.
Stern has some solid designers working in the offices. And the buildings I've been in by his firm are competent. Volunteer doesn't do nuance, so his allegiance with Stern is likely only to last as long as someone doesn't point out that Stern is a designer, not a style-bound fanatic.
“Marble covers a multitude of sins.” – Aldous Huxley
welcome to archinect, Pat!
As posted on theDailyTrotter.com in response to the draft order:
The Root of Style.
The American Institute of Architects is an organization that has established some of the world’s best documents for economy. Their recent political appeal to their members asked for the support of Modern language in large public projects, against a prospective Executive Order requiring Classical language; a well studied Architect, especially an Architect in the GSA design category, can trace the bloodlines of style to a coherent language. So, theDailyTrotter (as Seth Trotter) wrote that Classical language should be referenced and understood in projects over Fifty Million in budget. The goal is to allow an Architect to answer for their understanding of Value and Order.
Gibberish.
Here we see how much Trump respects tradition:
Riding a golf cart on the green. Nothing is sacred to this guy. (That he owns the course is not relevant.)
like which many Trump initiatives, there is a kernel of truth. The public has not been involved in the design process. However, this is the fault of media more than anything — architects and experts are being punished because bureaucrats and elites in government and media see design as an extra expense, not necessary, something anybody can do. Then we end up with a lot of mediocre modern public buildings (as opposed to nice modern private, university, homes). It all comes back to Ratatouille: Anybody Can Cook, but that doesn’t mean everybody can.
Perhaps this is a good opportunity to the public to architecture. But who is going to do that in today’s hyper niche, partisan, politics-first, hack media?
I would like to espouse a different opinion, in which Architects exist because "opportunity to the public" (SIC) results in a remedy more deadly than the symptoms.
The public—even the well educated public—just doesn't know much about architecture. This a shame. But also I suspect the critical apparatus in architecture is in disarray. I know that is the case in literature and the visual arts. The pressure is tremendous to produce work that is sensational—and insubstantial. It is what the public wants, or what sells the most books—or what moves the over-rich who buy paintings at Basel Miami now. And who knows what the social media driven public would like in a building. We know what kind of president it gave us.
If I hear "what is the Instagram moment" one more fucking time in a meeting...
Or we might get a building that looks like a cat. At some point we need to come to terms with the culture for which we are building and trying to send a message, which, for quick, causal assessment, is a mess. One measure is the state of political rhetoric, which has declined into sound bites and self-serving snips. This is supposed to be a nation of values and ideals. You won't find a single ideal in any Trump speech, any statement of value, any phrase of inspiration. All he says is make America great again, which the public is buying in greater numbers. But he's not alone—the same could be said of Clinton and just about every candidate for the last decades. The reason for this is such ideals don't sell the public, which leads to the question why not. Answers to this question would probably lead to divisive fights that lead nowhere, which again says something about where we are.
trolling works better when it's more than just word salad
Trump and tradition, part 2. Old news, but I just bumped into this:
To build his skyscraper, Trump first had to knock down the Bonwit Teller building, a luxurious limestone building erected in 1929. The face of the building featured two huge Art Deco friezes that the Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted to preserve. The museum asked Trump to save the sculptures and donate them, and the mogul agreed—as long as the cost of doing so wasn’t too high.
But then, according to journalist Harry Hurt III in his book Lost Tycoon, Trump discovered that taking out the sculptures would delay demolition by two weeks. He wasn’t willing to wait. “On his orders, the demolition workers cut up the grillwork with acetylene torches,” Hurt wrote. “Then they jackhammered the friezes, dislodged them with crowbars, and pushed the remains inside the building, where they fell to the floor and shattered in a million pieces.”
https://www.motherjones.com/po...
"Therefore this mandate must be some racist dog whistle or some nonsese" Correct.
BTW, Gary, thank you for that reminder of Trump's never ending duplicity. There is no humanity in what this man does.
It can be all of these things, they are not mutually exclusive.
PF et al., above—
If Trump were culturally and civic minded, he could at least have preserved the friezes and donated them to the Met.
He isn't.
Trump does not care about the unborn child (he was once pro-abortion).
Trump does not care about the polis.
Trump does not care about the people, nor their health.
He is not shackled by the past, by tradition.
Nor hampered by stuffy morality.
Nor fettered by any spiritual leaning.
He is the quintessential modern man.
I fear he is happier than I am, and for some reason I think he is going to heaven and I am not.
I don't understand anything anymore.
"....potentially reduces an entire architectural philosophy to a caricature. Arbitrarily pasting columns and arches on a building so it looks like a Parthenon-Colosseum hybrid is pretentious — and doesn’t make the building classical."
Who is talking about doing this? Nobody.
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