The White House issued a new executive order today—Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again—which dictates that new federal buildings be designed in the classical and traditional styles. This EO is now the third of its kind.
By Neoclassical architecture, the White House means the “Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco” styles. And by traditional architecture, the White House means the “Gothic, Romanesque, Second Empire, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and other Mediterranean styles of architecture historically rooted in various regions of America.”
The last EO pertaining to federal architecture came on January 20, 2025, Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture. This EO followed a previous version from the first Trump presidency, issued in December 2020.
“Design must flow from the needs of the Government and the aspirations and preferences of the American people to the architectural profession, and not vice versa,” the EO states. “The advice of distinguished architects practiced in classical or traditional architecture should, as a rule, be sought prior to the award of important design contracts.”
The EO updates the 1962 Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture, passed under the tutelage of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Infrastructure projects or land ports of entry do not have to fall into these retrograde aesthetic categories. The EO specifically applies to “all federal courthouses and agency headquarters,” “all federal public buildings in the National Capital Region,” and “all other federal public buildings that cost or are expected to cost more than $50 million in 2025 dollars to design.”
Deconstructivist and Brutalist styles are no good, this EO declares. Instead, other styles—and their practitioners—should be emulated.
Architects to aspire to, the EO states, are Alberti, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Palladio; Enlightenment masters Robert Adam, John Soane, and Christopher Wren; and 19th-century architects Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Robert Mills, and Thomas U. Walter.
Twentieth-century practitioners such as Julian Abele, Daniel Burnham, Rafael Carmoega, Charles F. McKim, John Russell Pope, Julia Morgan, and the firm of Delano and Aldrich are also apt examples, the EO says.
The EO explicitly prioritizes classical and traditional architecture. It states that when a design competition is to be held, “the Administrator shall actively recruit architectural firms and, as applicable, designers with experience in classical and traditional architecture to enter such competition and shall, to the extent practicable, ensure that multiple designs in such modes are advanced to the final evaluation round.”
The General Services Administration is in charge of ensuring the EO is adhered to by architects.
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