On September 12, 2025, the Financial Times published a letter to the editor by National Civic Art Society president Justin Shubow:
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In “Don’t make federal architecture beautiful again” (Opinion, Life & Arts, September 6), Carlo Ratti argues that President Donald Trump is wrong to reorient federal architecture in a classical and traditional direction since what America needs are experimental, “sustainable” new buildings.
He alludes to the reasons the founding fathers embraced the classical tradition. However, Ratti fails to understand that the founders looked forwards while simultaneously looking backwards (as they did in political philosophy). For instance, Thomas Jefferson designed the Virginia Capitol, one of the most important American buildings of his time, as a close imitation of an ancient Roman temple, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, in southern France.
Focusing on technological innovation and the use of new materials, Ratti downplays the significance of aesthetics. One of Jefferson’s foremost reasons for choosing classical exemplars for the new nation was their beauty, which he said had the “approbation of thousands of years”.
In claiming that classical architecture is wrong for the modern era, Ratti also completely skips over the Beaux-Arts era in government buildings, which produced some of the most iconic, beloved structures in the country. The US Supreme Court, National Archives, and Jefferson Memorial — all completed in the 1930s and 1940s — are classical temples, not experimental designs.
Would it have been better that these had been constructed in the International Style, the avant-garde fashion of the time?
Aesthetics and symbolism particularly matter in government buildings since they physically embody the continuity of the nation’s values. I played a key role in promoting the ideas underlying Trump’s recent executive order, and have often said the common person is not ennobled or inspired by a “sustainable” building that looks like an alien spacecraft, such as the San Francisco federal building or Salt Lake City’s United States Courthouse.
And ironically, traditional architecture is in fact highly sustainable. Traditional buildings have longer life-cycles than modernist ones and require less energy to produce.
Moreover, architectural experimentation makes least sense in government designs, aesthetically or functionally. The US courthouse in Phoenix, Arizona, for example, which was completed in 2000, is precisely that — an “innovative” glass box in the desert that gets scorchingly hot inside.
Justin Shubow
President, National Civic Art Society
Former chairman of the US Commission of Fine Arts
Washington, DC. US