Trump should build to last
Will the government finally stop giving the concrete finger to popular taste by erecting ugly, expensive and unsustainable buildings with taxpayers’ money instead of fostering a civic architecture that speaks the language of American democracy?The leaking of a draft directive that calls for a return to ‘Classical and traditional styles’ in major public buildings in Washington DC has occasioned outrage and contempt from the expected quarters: architects who know best and journalists to whom the exterior of a public building is an obstacle to be surmounted on the way into the corridors of power. But the traffic circus known as Dupont Circle is not about to become a Roman circus, with lions of the Senate fighting each other with net, trident and rolled-up order papers.
