[whatnext]

Trump is going, but it looks like his dislike of modern architecture has permeated the GSA:

Trump’s Defeat Didn’t Stop His ‘Ban’ on Modern Architecture
The president never signed a controversial “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” executive order. But a neoclassical-only building mandate is still happening.
By Kriston Capps
November 12, 2020

Back in August, the General Services Administration posted a solicitation for a $125 million federal courthouse set to be built in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The language in the document included a telling requirement for the structure’s future architects: “Classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style absent special extenuating factors necessitating another style.”

That language appeared verbatim in “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” a draft executive order that circulated in February. The mandate from the White House would have made classical architecture the house style for the federal government.

A similar decree appeared in an earlier GSA solicitation for an $86 million federal courthouse in Huntsville, Alabama. The bid, which was awarded back in 2019, is even more specific about the Trump administration’s vision: “GSA intends that the design of the new courthouse be neoclassical/greek revival in style, in keeping with other recent Federal courthouses in the State of Alabama.”

President Donald Trump never signed that executive order, which would have banned modernist designs for new federal buildings. After a spate of outrage — it was roundly condemned by the American Institute of Architects, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the dean of architecture at the famously traditional University of Notre Dame and at least 11,000 architects who wrote to the White House — the order faded....

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...&sref=x4rjnz06