Biden Revokes Trump’s Wild Plan To ‘Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again’
Image via JL IMAGES / Shutterstock.com
To have a less biting preview of the differences of opinion between the 45th and 46th US presidents, you’ll just need to see what buildings they both consider to be beautiful.
Last year, Donald Trump’s administration left fans of Brutalist architecture on edge when it issued a document, titled Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again, which insisted for federal architecture to maintain a classical style as “the preferred and default” look. In December, Trump signed an executive order called Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture as more contemporary structures apparently failed to portray the “stability of the American Government.”
Trump’s office shunned Brutalist architectural highlights like the Hubert H. Humphrey Department of Health and Human Services Building, the Robert C. Weaver Department of Housing and Urban Development Building, and the Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building as “undistinguished” and “uninspiring,” and described that the style was “just plain ugly.”
However, President Joe Biden repealed the order on Wednesday, among several other actions.
The White House team did not elaborate on this decision, though it has asked the director of the Office of Management and Budget, as well as relevant parties, to “promptly consider taking steps to rescind any orders, rules, regulations, guidelines, or policies, or portions” activated by Trump’s administration for these executive orders.
As suggested by NPR, this revokement will seemingly implicate the Council on Improving Federal Civic Architecture set up by Trump’s office.
Personnel were previously asked by Trump’s team to look to “Classical Greek and Roman architecture” à la the work of Michelangelo and Palladio; Enlightenment-driven architecture by Christopher Wren and Robert Adam; the buildings of 19th-century designers Charles F. McKim, Robert Mills, and Richard Morris Hunt; and 20th-century buildings of John Russell Pope and Delano and Aldrich as the basis for future federal constructions.
[via NPR, cover image via JL IMAGES / Shutterstock.com]
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