Trump imposes “traditional and classic” architecture

No area escapes him. This Monday, January 20, immediately after taking office marked by an investiture ceremony held within the Chaptersthe new president of the United States Donald Trump inaugurated his mandate with the signing of numerous decreesincluding one aimed at impose a certain style of architecture to American public buildings.

Called “Promoting beautiful civic and federal architecture”, the latter orders that the future public buildings resort to a “traditional, regional and classical” architecture in order to restore its “nobility” to the American nation. In this text, the president asks the federal administration, in consultation with the country’s ministries and agencies, to submit “within 60 days recommendations” for implement this policy. He specifies that in the meantime, “if the project of a new federal public building deviating from this policy is proposed”, it must be notified in time to be able to reject it.

Government buildings only in neoclassical style

Donald Trump had already established this decree in December 2020. More precisely, the text ordered that all new government buildings adopt a neoclassical styleand that United States federal agencies demolish or transform modernist or contemporary federal buildings. In its first drafts, it even prohibited by name brutalism and deconstructivism ; opposed to linear and symmetrical constructions, this contemporary architectural movement is embodied by big names such as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel.

This order, which provoked outrage from the American Institute of Architects and other organizations, lasted only two months before being canceled by his successor Joe Bidentook office on January 20, 2021. “The Biden administration has returned to communities the freedom of choice in terms of design, essential in the development of buildings that best serve the public,” rejoiced the president of the American Institute of Architects, Peter Exley.

A crusade against modernism

“Neoclassicism as propaganda masks ideological opposition to real democracy and human dignity. »

Michael R Allen

The American conservative right has for several years been leading a crusade against non-classical architecturewhich she considers to be the symbol of a deconstruction of national identity, landmarks and traditional values. Embodied by buildings like the White House and the Capitol, neoclassicism, where well-aligned columns, symmetry, rectilinear lines, balance and traditional symbols of power and wealth reign, reflects in Trump’s eyes his political vision where prevail order and unity.

“The idea that architects remove references to ancient symbols of power offends them, as does any allusion to social progress or the recognition of all the actors and actresses who shape the world. […] Neoclassicism as propaganda masks an ideological opposition to real democracy and human dignity,” analyzed the American historian and researcher in 2021 Michael R Allen in a column published on the Platform website (translated here into French).

If architecture has always reflected and served political visions, the United States has never known such a reductive decree in this area, warns the specialist. The latter denounces “a dictatorial decision” “which reflects a policy intended to limit citizen rights, cultural diversity, social conscience and artistic expression”. A thought also based on “old myths about the supposed elitism of modernism and his descendants.

A simplistic view of architecture

This is not the first time that a head of state has attempted to impose artistic and architectural vision. It is even one of the recurring distinctive signs of nationalist, authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. We obviously think of totalitarian architecture Stalinist or Mussolini, and to Adolf Hitler’s crusade against modern art, renamed “degenerate art”this one including the Bauhaus, a school of architecture and design closed by the Nazis in 1933. Hitler had also planned the construction of Germania, a monumental capital designed by the architect Albert Speer in a neoclassical style.

The opposition between two types of architecture – classical on one side, modernist and contemporary on the other – which each represent two opposing worldviews reveals a lack of knowledge of architectural history and its complexity. For example, Le Corbusier, a famous, extremely innovative modernist architect, is often accused of having affinities with fascism (especially with the Vichy regime), as did the American modernist and white supremacist Philip Johnson. Conversely, the American neoclassicism praised by Trump has its roots in Greco-Roman history, recalling that the United States is the fruit of multiculturalism…And therefore the purity of the American identity so dear to Trump does not exist.