Trump's war on "ugly architecture"....Ah a little levity...YMMV

[LeftInTX]

Early in his first presidency he issued a draft order named Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again, which along with encouraging classical architecture aimed to ban civic buildings from being built in brutalist or deconstructivist styles.

"Architectural designs in the brutalist and deconstructivist styles, and the styles derived from them, fail to satisfy these requirements and shall not be used," the document stated.

This draft order was criticised by the American Institute of Architects, which "strongly and unequivocally" opposed the change and called on members to sign an open letter to the Trump administration.

https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/21/trump-promoting-beautiful-federal-civic-architecture-executive-order/

I don't know if an EO is BS, but I really don't picture this going too far.

[osteopath6]

1. Is it just me

Or are gov buildings more about bringing talent under one roof and doing the nation's work?

I don't care if they're beautiful. If we were smart as a species our homes would be ugly, but super energy efficient 😁

Actually kind of dig the earthen homes (is that how you say it?)

[LeftInTX]

3. Yeah...I live near military bases and grew up on them....

Talk about ugly architecture!

The living spaces etc were so bad that it was depressing. No esthetics, No trees. No shade. Dirty sandboxes. No parks. It was like living and working in a housing project ~ minus the gangs....

But I agree, govt buildings should be functional and simple However, public buildings should also be welcoming spaces.

[osteopath6]

5. Thats so neat, LeftInTX!

Definitely not the prettiest 😄

Totally agree on public spaces and offices where people work and all that. I just remember something like the core of the argument being A outside/"facade" whatever lol style vs. B style, I was like huh... but its the people inside that make it special.

Like special, special. How you feel driving past the White House or seeing old battlefields. Just a history nerd I suppose, but the old colonial (maybe?) style was always visually striking, just can't help but think there has to be a better way to design these spaces to use minimal environmental controls and save on energy.

I saw this cool off grid housing show once where they dug a small vent like 8ft deep and circulated air through it, and it somehow came out like 55 degrees F, AC temps 😅 So cool!

[Tanuki]

2. This is from the muthafucka who destroyed the art deco classic

Bonwit Teller building to make way for his garish Trump Tower.

https://envisioningtheamericandream.com/2024/04/15/the-travesty-of-trump-tower-and-bonwit-teller/


"...Long before I hated Donald Trump, I despised Trump Tower that tacky glass monstrosity on Fifth Avenue that replaced the elegant and stylish department store Bonwit Teller. If Bonwit’s signified impeccable style and taste, Trump Tower was everything garish and tacky.

Like the real estate developer himself.

The venerable Bonwit Teller closed its store at Fifth and 56th in 1979. That was good news for an ambitious 33-year-old Donald Trump, who acquired the old Bonwit’s building and began demolition in 1980, razing the 1929 art deco limestone structure to construct his namesake tower.

At the very top of the façade were limestone relief panels that were not only Bonwit Teller’s signature but works of art.
....

When I looked outside, I realized that a cluster of workmen were on a scaffold in the process of destroying the Art Deco limestone bas relief with masonry saws and jackhammers.

This piece of art and history being drilled to bits was destroyed right in front of my eyes.

Suddenly all the gallery goers in the room noticed too, going over to the large windows in disbelief, as we watched the demolition in absolute helpless horror. The sculptures fell to the ground to crack into smithereens.

Then someone in the room muttered loud enough for all to hear: “That fucking bastard.”

No one had to ask who he was referring to.

It was Donald Trump."....(more)

[LeftInTX]

4. Yes, the irony. I also value historic buildings.

[tanyev]

7. Yeah, this feels more like something that is a bee in Stephen Miller's bonnet

and he just got Trump to sign off on it.

[Blue_Roses]

12. Yep

Sounds like Stephen Miller is behind alot of these EOs. Trump doesn't even understand much of what he's saying because someone else is writing this for him.

Stephen Miller is definitely behind the immigration push. He was obsessed with it in the first term and now it seems he's gone over the edge.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

8. Iirc, Preservationists begged him not to destroy

those architectural elements, possibly even offered to pay for saving them. He just did it anyway. Jerkoff.

[Tanuki]

9. Yes, and he had promised to donate them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He callously had his wrecking crew smash them to bits and then, pretending to be "John Barron," made some statements dissing the artwork he had destroyed and giving absurd and patently false justifications. This is an interesting read on the subject:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.artnet.com/art-world/donald-trump-bonwit-teller-friezes-met-2132673%3famp=1

"Donald Trump’s relationship to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was permanently damaged early on. He refused to donate artworks that he had promised to the museum and instead had them destroyed, along with a venerable building that had played an important role in American art history.

At that site, the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in Manhattan at which Trump constructed his prestige project Trump Tower between 1980 and 1982, the flagship store of the luxury department store chain Bonwit Teller and Co. had earlier stood. The 1929 building was the work of the same architects who had designed Grand Central Terminal, Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore. It was intended originally to house the women’s department store Stewart. Bonwit Teller, who took over the building in 1930 and opened it anew, soon worked with world-famous artists. Starting in 1936, the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí regularly decorated the windows with spectacular installations, for example in 1939, working with the theme “night and day.” In the 1950s, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg worked for the company on the side as window dressers, using the pseudonym “Matson Jones.” Among other things, Johns displayed his now iconic painting Flag on Orange Field behind a mannequin in the windows in 1957. That same year in the same place, Rauschenberg showed his Red Combine Painting along with others. Two years earlier, the large photographic work Blue Ceiling Matson Jones could be seen in the background of the Bonwit Teller windows.

1959, James Rosenquist was also working for the department store. A half century later, he recalled: “By the late 1950s I’d begun to lead a double life. In the daytime I painted billboards and designed display windows for Bonwit Teller, Tiffany’s, and Bloomingdale’s; at night and on weekends I hung out with artists and painted.” In 1961, five large-format paintings by the then almost completely unknown artist Andy Warhol stood and were hung in the windows on Fifth Avenue. Warhol was then earning his living mostly with advertising assignments, starting in 1951 with work for Bonwit Teller display director Gene Moore. At the time, this descendant of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants was not taken seriously as a painter. Ten years later, Warhol changed his approach, putting his own works in the windows of Bonwit Teller, and his global career took off. Today a museum director would kill for one of these paintings—among them, the now famous Blast with its Superman theme, and Before and After 1 which depicts a nose job. “For more than 50 years, Bonwit Teller had an eye for the New York avant-garde art scene,” as the scholarly publication The Art Story summarized the meaning of this New York art site. “Under Moore’s direction in the midcentury, Bonwit Teller gave many modern artists their start in the world of art and design. With free creative reign, avant-garde artists experimented in the department store window, turning a glass case into an alternative art space, and introducing the public to new and exciting styles.”

This part of the history of art and of New York City appears to have eluded Donald Trump. And that’s not all: the developer wasn’t even willing to save the artworks inside the building from destruction, breaking a promise to the renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is nearby, because profit and time were dearer to him than culture."....(more)

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

11. I didn't know about the avant garde artists connection.

Facts related to the thuggish behavior of the orange menace never cease to arise and never fail to disgust me.

[Astraea]

6. Stalin had an eye for architecture, too

Look up the Seven Sisters of Moscow.

[Mike 03]

10. This is so Third Reich

When Hitler got into power, he and his top lieutenants immediately went after anything that smacked of Modernism, especially expressionistic paintings. I would need to refresh my memory about his view specifically of architecture, but we all know he brought in Albert Speer to build colossal new structures that symbolized the Third Reich. There were even exhibits of what Hitler considered hideous art. He also forbade certain types of music associated with the U.S. -- blues, jazz. Wagnerian opera was more his style.

[CTyankee]

13. I live in a house built in 1941, the last to be built in this part of New Haven before WW2. It is a lovely small home,

just right for a small family and what I would call "quasi-colonial" in style. The other houses in my immediate area also reflect that colonial-ish style of the day. We paid $155K and now it is worth $400K. Of course, we'll probably need Assisted Living quarters next, given our age, but we've had nearly 30 years here and upgraded as needed. (I quickly learned what a "fuse" box was when we moved in and I tried to use my electric coffee maker, toaster and microwave oven all at the same time).