On his first day, President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders to immediately carry out his agenda. Many — such as ending birthright citizenship — were greeted with mixed reactions, including pushback and legal challenges, AP News reported.
But one executive action did not nab as many headlines. On Monday, Trump issued a memo to the General Services Administration to promote “beautiful federal civic architecture.” The president called for potentially changing the GSA’s Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.
The letter directs the GSA and heads of U.S. federal agencies to submit recommendations “to advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings …”
The directive says buildings should respect regional, traditional and classical architectural heritage. Recommendations are due to the White House within 60 days.
The memo is short on specific details, but it mirrors an action Trump took in the waning days of his first term in the Oval Office. A December 2020 executive order also directed that federal buildings should be identifiable and beautiful.
The 2020 order, which was revoked by President Joe Biden when he took office, applied to all federal courthouses, agency headquarters, federal public buildings in Washington, D.C., and all other federal public buildings expected to cost over $50 million in 2020 dollars to construct. The order excluded infrastructure and land ports of entry.
Specifically, the 2020 action singled out brutalism and deconstructivism as architectural styles that diverged from the preferred architecture.
The American Institute of Architects expressed concern about actions that could wrest design control from local communities.
“AIA supports the GSA’s Guiding Principles, and we support freedom in design,” the group said in a Tuesday statement. “AIA’s members believe the design of federal buildings must first be responsive to the people and communities who will use those buildings. Our federal buildings across the country must reflect America’s wealth of culture, rich traditions and unique geographic regions. AIA has strong concerns that mandating architecture styles stifles innovation and harms local communities.”
In addition, the AIA said the current Design Excellence Program at the GSA, based on the Guiding Principles of Federal Architecture, achieves the goal of letting local communities innovate. Therefore, AIA said, the program should be protected, not altered.
