Donald Trump’s desire to ‘make buildings beautiful again’ speaks to a sinister reactionary fixation on classical architecture
Architecture’s endless war between the classical and the modernist has leaked into politics again. This month saw the emergence of a draft of Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again, an executive order from the desk of Donald Trump, which would mandate a return to the style chosen by the US’s founding fathers for its associations with “democratic Athens and republican Rome”. New buildings would be designed “to endure for centuries”. By banning “plain ugly” modernism, the document suggests, the administration can restore the US’s unsullied past.
Modernist architecture has come under fire in Britain too. A couple of years ago, the then housing minister, Kit Malthouse, celebrated the launch of the Building Better, Building Beautiful commission with a tweet comparing a neoclassical courthouse in Alabama with a glass and steel building in London. “One will stand for centuries, one won’t,” wrote Malthouse.
Original Article : HERE
from MetNews https://metnews.pw/when-classical-beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-rightwing-beholder-india-block/
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