Trump and megalomania in architecture

(The Guardian; Peščanik.net)

Given all the horrors of Trump’s second administration, the demolition of the East Wing of the White House is hardly a top ten. But it is a potent symbol of mindless destruction—and as Trump himself knows, images matter in politics. The demolition also strangely combines many elements of the typical Trumpian approach to power: blatant lies about the ballroom project (“It won’t interfere with the existing building. It’ll be close to it, but it won’t touch it”), disregard for the law (in this case, heritage preservation rules), and an unprecedented level of cronyism (with various corporate executives cajoling the president with donations for his grotesque self-aggrandizement project). Finally, there is something mournful about the removal of the building that housed the offices of America’s first ladies. For all that, Trump’s butchering of the White House fits into a broader global trend: populist far-right leaders in many countries are using spectacular architecture to advance their political agendas and, in particular, to embody their vision of “real people”—“real Americans,” “real Hungarians,” etc.—in stone.

Just before Christmas 2020, in the final days of his first administration, Trump took time out of his busy schedule to promote a big lie about how he almost ran and won the election only to issue an executive order titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.” The order declared classicism the preferred style for new federal buildings and nearly banned modernism altogether. Biden rescinded the order, and Trump then reinstated a version of it this year, on the day of his second inauguration. It’s almost forgotten that the 2020 order went hand in hand with Trump’s “1776 Commission,” an ill-fated attempt to whitewash American history. Both the architecture orders and the history instruction manuals had the same goal: to promote the image of the United States as a clean and “beautiful” country.

In his use of architecture, Trump is not the epitome of American exceptionalism, as the unconvincing reports about “Trump, the Eternal Builder” suggest. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also built massive structures, from Istanbul’s giant mosque in Taksim Square to the new presidential palace in Ankara. Erdogan promotes the Ottoman-Seljuk style as complementary to his neo-Ottoman understanding of Turkey. Viktor Orbán’s reconstructions of historic buildings on Budapest’s Palace Hill are supposed to represent a correct understanding of Hungarian history. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rebuilt Hindu temples—most controversially on the foundations of the demolished mosque in Ayodhya.

The pattern is always the same: a layer of history is removed – be it the Mughal period or, in Hungary, state socialism with its modernist buildings – and the reconstruction is celebrated as a return to the authenticity and greatness of a particular people. But behind the symbolic message of the “true people”, these construction projects actually testify to the dominance of the current government. The unspoken message is: “We won and the land is now ours.” This claim cannot be avoided by citizens. In their daily lives, they can avoid television and online propaganda, but not buildings. Even if such autocratic figures are removed from power – and of course they do everything they can to delay that outcome – their buildings and monuments remain.

Trump’s case is, admittedly, unique in one sense: he already had a string of buildings under his belt before he became president – ​​but most of them are not particularly classical. On the contrary, they are modern on the outside, and inside you can clearly see the feverish neo-nouveau fantasy of Versailles – which has now given birth to the gilded Oval Office, a reflection of a taste that critic Kate Wagner has described as “rococo as imagined by the local car salesman”. And while all far-right leaders are fond of grand buildings, none of them has so far shown a fixation on the ballroom. The reason is probably banal: banquets and catering are among Trump’s few successful business ventures. It is also meant to be a space for unlimited flattery of the president and “deal-making”.

Architects who promote traditional styles have been most happy to implement Trump's ideas. Of course, style can never be reduced to a specific policy; modernism is not in itself progressive (some of the fascist buildings in Italy are marvels of modernism). But the way some promoters of classicism talk about beauty and insist that "public buildings in the classical style encourage us to be proud of our country" is not just regressive - it legitimizes megalomaniacal architecture of little aesthetic value.

The architect in charge of the ballroom, James S. McCreary II, studied and worked under Eisenman, a great devotee of “deconstructivism” in architecture, a movement that Trump explicitly derided in his executive order as “chaotic.” McCreary at one point declared non-traditional architecture “godless” and specialized in sacred buildings. Eisenman called the ballroom plans “foolish” and noted that “placing the portico at the end instead of in the middle of a long facade is ignorant.”

This monstrous building will most likely be empty (unless its purpose is changed and it becomes, for example, a storage facility for secret documents). It is already time to think about its repurposing or its complete removal. Of course, this would not please the MAGA activists, who oppose the removal of every Confederate statue in the name of "historical preservation". But, on the other hand, they have nothing to say about the demolition of the East Wing - although the building probably remains a fond memory for citizens who have visited the White House.

(Translated by: Slavica Miletic)