Episode 120: Federal Style

This week, Jessica and Michael discuss a draft executive order that would amend the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture written in 1962 and require many new federal buildings to resemble classical architecture.

The president, first and foremost a real-estate developer, is used to imposing his specifications on his “huge, beautiful buildings,” Michael says, however, that whether it’s the Trump administration’s mandate for the classical or Prince Charles’s “monstrous carbuncle” speech decrying contemporary architecture,

Any attempt to, at the end of the day, legislate and codify taste is always going to be suspect.… Subjugating everyone else to your personal taste is the ultimate expression of control.

Also mentioned this week:

• Cathleen McGuigan, Architectural Record, Will the White House Order New Federal Architecture To Be Classical?
• Katie Roberts and Robin Pogrebin, New York Times, Draft Executive Order Would Give Trump a New Target: Modern Design
• Rain Noe, Core77, Explaining the Executive Order Proposing to Hand Design Authority Over to President Trump
• Kate Wagner, The New Republic, Duncing About Architecture
• National Civic Art Society
• Prince Charles’s “monstrous carbuncle” speech (1984)
• Architecture Daily, Foster, Hadid, Gehry, Nouvel, Piano and more against Prince Charles (2009)
• Marketwatch, Do you use Times New Roman? People might think you’re a Trump supporter, according to this study
• Jilax & Blax, Song 2 (Blur Tribute) via Souncloud
• Blurred photograph from New York Times, Full Video: Trump’s State of the Union Speech
• Dushko Petrovich, n + 1, Rise of the Blur
• Election Night 1960 CBS News Coverage feat. Walter Cronkite
• California International Antiquarian Book Fair
• Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley

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