IT Blog

“For more than a century and a half, America’s Federal architecture produced beautiful and beloved buildings,” reads a draft executive order by the Trump administration obtained by Fast Company called “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again.” The proposed order, first obtained by Architectural Record, would mandate a classical or traditional style for new or renovated federal buildings.

Then things turned ugly. That’s at least according to this document. It claims that after the Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space issued its “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture” in 1962, classical architecture was replaced with increasing speed by midcentury modernist design, ranging from the “undistinguished to designs the public widely considered uninspiring . . . and even just plain ugly.” According to the draft order, the General Services Administration established the Design Excellence program in 1994 to better adhere to those original 1962 Guiding…