How Did Architecture Get To Be A Left/Right Political Issue?
/You’ve got to hand it to President Trump for his talent to capitalize on issues that force the political left to show its worst totalitarian tendencies and contempt for ordinary people. For a recent Exhibit A, see the State of the Union address. We now have an excellent Exhibit B, a draft Executive Order on the subject of the architectural style of federal buildings. The document is titled “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again.” Let’s call it the MFBBA.
The draft MFBBA was first reported by Architectural Digest on February 4, and comes with a legend declaring it to be “DELIBERATIVE/PRE-DECISIONAL/PRIVILEGED.” As far as I can determine, it has not been issued in final form, and it may never be; or it might be changed substantially before final issuance. But in its current form it is certainly not designed to avoid controversy. It begins with a brief history of federal architecture:
For more than a century and a half America’s Federal architecture produced beautiful and beloved buildings. Typically, though not exclusively, classical in design, [these buildings included] the White House, the Capitol building, [and] the Supreme Court. . . . In the 1950s the Federal Government largely abandoned traditional, classical designs, and began adopting mid-century modernism, including Brutalism, for Federal buildings. . . . The Federal architecture that ensued . . . ranged from the undistinguished to designs the public widely considered uninspiring . . . and even just plain ugly. . . . After 57 years, it is time to update the Guiding Principles to make Federal buildings beautiful again.
And then the directive:
Architectural styles — with special regard for the classical architectural style — that value beauty, respect regional architectural heritage, and command admiration by the public are the preferred styles for applicable Federal public buildings. In the National Capitol Region, and for all Federal courthouses, the classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style absent special attenuating factors necessitating another style.
Despite its preliminary status, let alone the very general nature of the directive, the MFBBA promptly ignited something of a firestorm of outrage from the usual suspects. I first encountered the issue on February 7 when I came across a New York Times unsigned editorial with the headline “What’s So Great About Fake Roman Temples?” Excerpt:
A spectacular campaign to elevate the design of federal buildings is under threat from small-minded classicists. . . . [T]he United States is nearly 250 years old; it no longer needs to wear borrowed clothes. And modern federal buildings rightly reflect the diversity of this great nation, from the wavy blue glass of the federal courthouse in Miami to the salvaged timber planks in a federal office building in Seattle to the vertiginous white facade of a courthouse annex in Salt Lake City. . . . The proposed executive order, titled ‘Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,’ would shift the style of future federal buildings back to the past.”
Many others joined in — somehow all of them from the political left. Over at The Architect’s Paper they have a roundup of outrage from the architectural community, all of whom somehow see this proposed Executive Order as an unforgivable breach of their “freedom of expression.”
Everyone from critics to commentators to professional organizations came out swinging this week in reaction to President Trump’s draft executive order to impose a neoclassical style (now publicly available) on all future federal architecture. AN reported yesterday that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) released a statement strongly opposing a uniform style . . . .
But here’s the problem these guys have: Federal architecture really did turn from mostly beautiful to mostly ugly back in about the 1950s, and has only partially gone back. And everybody knows this. You may think that the term “Brutalist” must have been slapped on certain particularly hideous buildings by people who hated them; but you would be wrong. In fact, the term Brutalist was adopted by the architects who designed in that style, and was from the outset very much associated with utopian socialist ideology. From the Wikipedia article on the subject:
Brutalism as an architectural philosophy was often associated with a socialist utopian ideology, which tended to be supported by its designers, especially by Alison and Peter Smithson, near the height of the style.
From Jacobin, October 15, 2018, in a piece titled “Save Our Brutalism” (advocating to not tear down these hated buildings):
Today, alas, there is more talk about tearing down buildings in this [Brutalist] style than building new ones. But this also reflects a change in the idea of what architecture is for. Far from today’s neoliberal orthodoxy, many Brutalist buildings expressed a progressive or even utopian vision of communal living and public ownership. Today, the battle to protect them is also a fight to defend this social inheritance.
A “utopian vision of communal living and public ownership” — how idyllic! Here’s how I would put it: Buildings in the Brutalist (and related) styles perfectly communicate to the ordinary citizen that you are an ant next to the overwhelming power of the government to which you must submit.
I’ll give you just a few examples of some of the most widely hated federal buildings.
The FBI building in Washington (Charles F. Murphy Associates, 1965-75):
The HUD building in Washington (Marcel Breuer, 1965-68):
The HHS building in Washington (Marcel Breuer, 1972-77):
I’ll bet you have been to Washington multiple times and never gone to see any of these buildings. Why would you? They are painful to look at.
More recently, the modernist architecture has improved somewhat. There are even some that I positively like. But the best institutional buildings are still the ones that are classically inspired.
The fact is that these Brutalist buildings — and their more recent progeny — give a powerful insight into the mindset of the political left.