The whining white men trying to certify classicism as official government style

I was outraged by the executive order being pushed that would require “classical architecture to be the default style for new and remodeled federal buildings.” How seriously should we take this notion, promoted by a fringe group of historical architecture buffs that grandly styles itself the National Civic Art Society? It strikes me as just the latest distraction cooked up by right-wing ideologues to keep their supposed enemies occupied in the expending of energy to resist a plainly asinine idea. 

What do they think is going to happen? Tear down the Victorian Gothic Smithsonian castle? Festoon the Hirshorn’s drum with pilasters and garlands?

If a distraction, it’s worked, creating much dudgeon about the certification of an “official style” that America has never had and doesn’t need. 

Here I am taking the bait. I can at least add some useful context. 

These whining white guys think that because Classicism speaks to history as they see it, their history must be imposed on everyone else. You can see the kind of thing the Society promotes by looking at proposals for the World War I Memorial and the Eisenhower Memorial.

They are gaudy, conceptually empty, absurdly expensive, and do nothing to help us understand the significance of an event or empathize with the people commemorated. (With heavy lobbying, traditionalists won a partial victory in both with the bombast thankfully considerably toned down.)

Over years, the National Civic Arts Society and its followers have failed to rally many people to their cause and so have aligned themselves with some far-right conservatives who have tried to turn architecture into a battlefield in the culture wars. 

Seeing leftist plots everywhere, they have decided—against all evidence—that contemporary architecture is essentially socialist and elitist. Architecture is not innately ideological and most architects are apolitical. It is the choices made about what to build and the purposes to which the building is put that politicizes architecture. Lobbying for an official style falls into the politicizing category. 

Classicism can be lovely but it is innately exclusionary, since the long anglo-European history its proponents extoll includes way too many blood-soaked dictators and slaveholders. Many Americans are descended from survivors of the famines, wars and pogroms sponsored by despots who clothed their capitals in the trappings of the Roman Empire. They have a hard time relating to white columns and pediments.

The classicists haven't noticed that the architecture profession has largely dispensed with stylistic categories, and much of the pluralism of approach we see today is bracing. The best architects consider history, but they also seek to enhance a meaningful contemporary identity, engage numerous public stakeholders, accommodate the evolving ways people live, and express unique qualities of place. 

The best contemporary design engages society’s many pressing issues and includes important but historically overlooked community stakeholders. The classicists show no passion for an architecture expressive of place, of our time, of what we do, and who we are.