TRUMPITECTURE

Alex Beam’s article in yesterday’s Boston Globe has a provocative title (for a liberal paper): “Trump may be right about one thing, architecture.” The author seconds Trump’s critique of Brutalism and quotes me that too often we get “courthouses that look like corporate office buildings and atrium-equipped government buildings that resemble casinos or upscale resort hotels.” Beam refers to traditional or so-called Classical buildings as “Trumpitecture.” Catchy, but  misleading. Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s mansion in Pal Beach, is a Moorish-Spanish confection designed by Marion Syms Wyeth and Joseph Urban in 1934-37, and his apartment in New York’s Trump Tower is decorated in an ersatz Louis XV style, but as Beam  himself writes, Chicago’s Trump Tower (designed by SOM) is a mainstream modern skyscraper, as are the Trump Tower in New York, and the Trump hotels in Vancouver, Honolulu, and Las Vegas, and the recently renamed Trump properties in Toronto and Panama. On the other hand, one of the first recent federal courthouses in a Greek Revival style (designed by HBRA) was built in Tuscaloosa in 2006. That was a full decade before Trump became President.