Posted on 02/05/2020 10:07:48 AM PST by yesthatjallen
While the country was riveted by the President’s impeachment trial, a Washington rumor was quietly bubbling about a potential executive order that, if implemented, would profoundly affect the future of federal architecture.
RECORD has obtained what appears to be a preliminary draft of the order, under which the White House would require rewriting the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture, issued in 1962, to ensure that “the classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style” for new and upgraded federal buildings. 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” (never mind, of course, that it was the prevailing style of the day).
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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.” The draft document uses the same words—dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability—while declaring that Brutalist and Deconstructivist styles “fail to satisfy these requirements and shall not be used.”
Yet Moynihan’s Guiding Principles also dictate that “an official style must be avoided,” and that new buildings should reflect their time. “Design must flow from the architectural profession to the government and not vice versa,” the guidelines state. “The Government should be willing to pay some additional cost to avoid excessive uniformity in design of Federal buildings.”
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(Excerpt) Read more at architecturalrecord.com ...
There is some striking modern architecture but too many architects are pushing the limits of absurd and ugly just to stand out.
I am assuming this is a good thing that Trump is proposing? I know about as much about government architecture as Nancy Pelosi knows about how water tastes.
I’m an architectural nerd that doesnt do the “the only good architecture is old stuff” trope a lot of people like to put out when the subject comes up.
That being said, civic buildings are supposed to invoke a certain image and stature that has all but vanished since the mid 60s, and only got worse after 9-11. Look at almost all city halls, courthouses, post offices, and levels of government on up, and the buildings are just soul-sucking bunkers or fortresses of blandness, usually surrounded by massive concrete slabs.
There was a reason people put aesthetics first in the past. To invoke respect, decorum, majesty, maturity, and to serve as a point of pride across the political spectrum.
You dont get that with 99% of the crap put up today. Cheap materials and 4th rate architecture more concerned about stopping a truck bomb than a place that no one would damage because it would equally bring the wrath of foe and friend if you did.
Even your local firehouse these days looks like a car repair joint.
Brutalism, baby Brutalism!!!
So European, it's going to be great.
Now get with the concrete!
Ugly Boston Government Building, on prime real estate, taking up space.
But then it is honest. It expresses the brutal, forceful nature of government,
Our government was designed along Classical Greek and Roman lines. Our Architecture should reflect this. BALANCE (between legislative and executive), proportion, default to always give precedence to tradition and established practice.
Go Trump!
Well. ...this is a really bad idea. ..government dictated design. .think the commie and Nazi architecture. ...
Also. ..think the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. ..it wouldn’t exist with with these government dictates. ....
Major federal government buildings should be handled through design competitions. Not some bureaucratic government office.
I don’t find govt buildings warm and inviting, including those with “classical” architecture (especially those, actually).
Howard Roark approves.....................
Hideous!
Why not make federal buildings in the Federal style?
The Federal look can be appropriate for new construction. I like it. It’s visual “branding” for civic dignity and the rule of law and reason.
Classical architecture is ennobling, timeless and beautiful. One of the great cultural divides between the left and the right in recent years in the UK was over architectural styles, with the former preferring modernist and post-modernist sterility, and the latter, championed by the late (recently deceased) Sir Roger Scruton attempting to bring back the beauty and harmony inherent in architectural classicism.
What were they thinking??????
Back in the day I was an interior design student; most of the architects also built furniture so we had to study and do drawings and write a history of their work. Seems that most turn of the century (20th) stuff was designed to soften the gothic look of the mid-1800s (and the Gothic stuff was really just a revival of even earlier ugly Gothic stuff). Gradually, everyone got so fed up with the ever evolving designs (everything from French Nouveau to Art Deco and Modern designs), we got the stark look of the Arts and Crafts era and eventually the coldness of the 60s designs. Personally, I love the 1930s Art Deco designs. There is a prime example of that in the Hecht Company warehouse on New York Avenue in DC. DC has had a trend, lately, of keeping and restoring the very old buildings and adding new updated designs attached or alongside them (for those that know DC, there is the old Greyhound Bus station on 9th street, NW, and newer buildings towering over it). A very nice effect, I think.
Forts.
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