President Donald Trump has signed a comprehensive executive order titled "Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again," establishing classical and traditional architectural styles as the preferred design approach for new federal buildings across the United States. The directive, signed on August 28, 2025, specifically designates Washington, D.C. as a location where classical architecture must become the default choice for government construction projects.
The executive order directly tackles decades of ongoing debate surrounding federal building design, asserting that public buildings should be immediately recognizable as civic structures and should embody qualities of dignity, stability, and inspiration for American citizens. This latest directive builds upon an earlier order from January 2025 called "Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture," which initially outlined the administration's vision that government buildings should be visually identifiable and deeply rooted in both regional and classical architectural traditions.
The order grounds its reasoning in America's founding era, when Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson personally oversaw architectural competitions for iconic structures like the Capitol building and the White House. These founding fathers deliberately embraced classical forms to create symbolic connections between the young American nation and the democratic traditions of ancient Greece and Rome. For more than a century following this precedent, civic architecture throughout the United States largely followed this classical trajectory.
However, beginning in the 1960s, federal buildings designed under the oversight of the General Services Administration increasingly adopted modernist and brutalist architectural styles. While these contemporary designs gained admiration within professional architectural circles, the new executive order characterizes these later buildings as unpopular with much of the general public, often indistinguishable from commercial projects, and lacking essential qualities of civic symbolism that should define government structures.
The 1994 launch of the GSA's Design Excellence Program represented an attempt to improve overall design standards for federal buildings, but the new executive order concludes that this program has fundamentally failed to achieve its stated goals. The order specifically criticizes the Design Excellence Program for consistently favoring prominent, well-known architects over meaningful local community input, ultimately resulting in buildings that may impress architectural experts but fail to resonate with ordinary American citizens.
To address these perceived shortcomings, the executive order explicitly specifies that classical and traditional architectural styles will now receive priority consideration in all new federal construction projects. These preferred styles include neoclassical, federal, beaux-arts, gothic, and other regionally rooted architectural forms that reflect local cultural traditions. Additionally, renovations or expansions of existing federal buildings are strongly encouraged to align with these traditional styles wherever technically and financially feasible.
The directive places significant new responsibilities on the General Services Administration to implement these architectural preferences. The agency must now actively employ architects who have received specific training in classical or traditional design principles, appoint a senior advisor dedicated to maintaining architectural standards, and ensure that design competitions and evaluation juries include experienced voices from these traditional architectural traditions.
Under the new policy, if any design proposal incorporates modernist or deconstructivist architectural elements, the GSA must submit a detailed written justification to the White House. This justification must include comprehensive comparisons of construction costs and civic suitability between the proposed modern design and available classical alternatives, effectively creating a bureaucratic preference for traditional styles.
By formally incorporating specific stylistic preferences into federal policy, this August executive order significantly extends the scope of January's earlier directive and contributes to ongoing national discussions about the appropriate role of government in shaping public architecture. Supporters of the new policy emphasize the superior ability of classical and traditional architectural styles to effectively convey civic identity, institutional dignity, and historical continuity, arguing that these approaches ground federal buildings in familiar visual languages that resonate with American citizens.
However, critics raise broader questions about how architectural decisions should be made in a democratic society and whether public buildings are best served by established historic styles or by contemporary approaches that directly respond to today's pressing needs. These modern considerations include environmental sustainability, universal accessibility for disabled citizens, and evolving cultural changes in American society.
In this broader context, the executive order represents more than simply dictating the visual appearance of courthouses or federal agency headquarters. It fundamentally addresses the larger philosophical question of how federal architecture should reflect and embody national values in the 21st century, setting the stage for continued debate about the intersection of politics, aesthetics, and public architecture in American society.
