Yes, neoclassical buildings are beautiful. Yes, boring glass boxes and federal concrete facades can be eyesores to some. And yes, it would be cool if every new I.M. Pei-style building on Brown’s campus was a beautiful Romanesque palace like Sayles. But imagine for a second neon-clad construction workers hauling rock-faced Westerly granite, all while someone wearing Apple AirPod Maxes walks by, late for their seminar on anti-colonialism. Wouldn’t it be a little uncanny? To invite the past to dominate the future of our landscape is ultimately a form of regression.
In December 2020, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.” It aimed to encourage the use of traditional architecture in federal buildings, namely Georgian, Neoclassical and Art Deco styles, among others. The order argued that classical architecture was more aesthetically pleasing and symbolically aligned with democratic ideals. According to conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson, the cost-efficient brutalist style that became popularized in the mid-20th century in comparison, is “designed to demoralize and hurt you.”
Given his house at Mar-a-Lago and his propensity for gold, gilded and gauche real estate properties, Trump’s efforts to retrofit the capitol would probably have had D.C. look less like Rome and more like Caesar’s Palace. And while “promoting beautiful federal civic architecture” seems to be a forgotten effort of Trump’s at the begrudging end of his presidency, it is the truest echo of what is at the center of the MAGA ideology. MAGA calls for an antiquated ideal of beauty to recreate an empire of the past instead of replicating the democratic principles that defined it. This aestheticism will be its downfall.
What the order ultimately sought to revoke was the General Services Administration’s 1962 referendum “Guiding principles for federal architecture,” which explicitly states: “The development of an official style must be avoided. Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government, and not vice versa.” The idea of design in this statement mirrors that of the idea of power in democracy: power flows from the people to the leaders of the government, and not vice-versa. Attempting to instate an official style is effectively the reversal of this idea, and should not be cited as a promotion of democracy at all.
The National Civic Art Society, a conservative non-profit organization, was the driving force behind Trump’s executive order. The society considers modernist architecture a “failure” and strives to help it return to its pre-Modernist roots. Marion Smith, chairman of the Society, supported the executive order by arguing that for too long, architectural elites had ignored public preferences for beauty in federal buildings, opting instead for modernist styles that were unpopular with the public. The idea that the public’s preference for beauty is a monolith overlooks the fact that architecture is always evolving along with culture. The brutalist styles that characterize federal buildings today are due to the fact that they align with the progressive, sustainable trends of the past couple decades, and they will rightfully continue to evolve with the nation.
Had “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” gone into effect, Trump’s petty historical revisionism of “fake news” on social media platforms like Truth Social may have very well taken to physical scaffolding. In March of this year, Trump hosted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán at his residence in Mar-a-Lago. Orbán has been endorsed by Trump on multiple occasions for his “strongman” approach to ruling and for leading a revival of Budapest’s classical public infrastructure since 2010. While partly cited as an effort to drive economic growth and tourism, the projects have widely erased Ottoman and other multi-cultural architectural elements of Budapest’s history in favor of a purified Christian identity, which benefits Orbán’s nationalist politics.
The idea shared by Trump and Orbán regarding the moral consequences of art and architecture on society is a controversial philosophy known as aesthetic moralism. A building can be good by convention because it does not collapse, but aesthetic moralism says that what truly makes a building good is how well it reflects a society’s idea of goodness.
Aesthetic moralism is widely regarded as a fallacy, often based in racist and xenophobic ideologies. One particularly compelling example surrounds the myth of the lost Tartarian Empire, a fictitious global civilization that boasted superior engineering and modern technology, but was ultimately wiped out by a giant mud flood during what conspirators call The Great Reset of 1834. Believers of the Tartaria conspiracy claim that many impressive buildings built by non-Western cultures were not truly built, but covertly unearthed from the ruins of this mythological empire. This conspiracy has, thus, been used as an argument for white supremacy, and purports that modern and non-Western styles are corrupting the fabric of society. While the Tartaria conspiracy only has a relatively small, devoted collection of followers, the mechanism of the belief is identical to that of the MAGA sentiment: we are not capable of discovering greatness anymore, and we must rally behind the empires of the past, coincidentally the racist ones.
Trump has supporters because he effectively promises them that there are cathedrals buried in the dirt, and all they have to do is dig. We are not to “make America great,” because it has already been done, and it is merely our job to do it “again.”
Architecture is a shorthand for the state of a nation. With his executive order Trump sought to leave a legacy of his idea of beauty, pushing a white aesthetic moralism. So while carved pillars of marble can seem innocuously beautiful, beauty rarely exists for its own sake. With no consistent ideology, Trump benefits from aesthetic displays of power like architecture. The failure of the 2021 executive order and ongoing critique of its underlying goals make it clear: America is outgrowing Trump’s ideal of beauty.
Camila Valdes ’27 can be reached at camila_valdes@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
