This article was originally published in Domus 1105, October 2025.
On 20 January 2025, the day Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as US president, one diktat passed somewhat unnoticed. Between an executive order on borders, another on tariffs and a third on gender, he also found time to address public aesthetics.
Indeed, “the Donald” dusted off one of his pet ideas: all of America’s Federal public buildings must “respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage”. Enough with modernity, let’s go back to the good old days, when architecture knew its stuff and upheld the nation’s good name.
In these past months, many have wondered what exactly classicism means according to Trump’s gospel. But, ultimately, it’s simple. Everything that came before the 20th century is good, everything else is bad. Or worse still, it’s a sin. Away with the International Style, Modernism, Expressionism and Brutalism – the latter being back in the limelight, as shown by the success of The Brutalist. And away even with Googie, the futuristic genre that transformed driveins into spaceships. We are faced with the paradox of paradoxes. To defend the American spirit, Frank Lloyd Wright – the greatest architect America has ever produced, the father of organic architecture who, decades before sustainability, established a dialogue between stone and nature like no other – was sent straight to modernist hell. Too advanced, too free, too independent.
Trump’s America has drawn up its aesthetic blueprint. It will become a big theme park of its own past, filled with buildings that hark back nostalgically while the world races forward.
With his executive order, the president directed federal agency heads and the General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings and real estate, to submit recommendations within 60 days to align federal architecture with traditional and “classical” principles. In other words, Georgian, Greek Revival, Gothic and other styles predating the modernist era. “Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings,” reads the decree with the comical solemnity of bureaucratic language that always hides the ridiculousness of intentions. They must “uplift and beautify public spaces” and “ennoble the United States”. No love for beauty, but fear of creativity. The idea of “codified beauty” or “canon law” corresponds to the principle that art, rather than questioning power, must be at its service. Aesthetics must reassure, not amaze.
There is no need to look back at the degenerate art of Germany in 1933. History teaches us that whenever power begins to dictate what is beautiful and what is ugly, we are always at the beginning of something. Generally, however, that something is anti-aesthetic and therefore anti-ethical. Trump’s America has drawn up its aesthetic blueprint. It will become a big theme park of its own past, filled with buildings that hark back nostalgically while the world races forward. It is a shame, because a society that fears new forms is a society that is afraid to look in the mirror. When you are scared of what you have become, you look back and end up not seeing what is happening in front of you. But perhaps that is precisely the intention.
Opening image: President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive at the South Lawn to participate in the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, Monday, April 21, 2025. Photo By The White House - Public Domain