Justin Shubow: “The last thing we want is kitschy architecture.”

By Adrian Jaulmes, our correspondent in Washington

INTERVIEW – The president of the National Civic Art Society, an association promoting classical architecture, is one of Donald Trump’s main advisors on architectural matters.

Justin Shubow was one of the authors of the presidential decree “Restoring Beauty to Federal Architecture,” which serves as a roadmap for the administration’s projects, and was appointed earlier this year to head a new Council for the Beautification of Transportation Infrastructure.

Le Figaro – Is there an official architecture in Washington, D.C., the American federal capital?

Justin Shubow: From its very foundation, Washington, D.C., has been associated with neoclassical architecture, which gives the city its unique character. The Founding Fathers of the United States, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, gave much thought to the architectural style of the new nation. Both were architecture enthusiasts. Jefferson was a genius. He commissioned the Virginia State Capitol, drawing direct inspiration from the Maison Carrée in Nîmes. His other architectural achievements were frequently influenced by buildings he had seen while stationed in Paris. The classical French architecture of the time also had a considerable impact on him.

This tradition lasted for almost 150 years, from the founding of the United States until World War II. Classical architecture was that of American democracy, and even though the federal government changed its style after that time, Americans continue to associate it with Washington, D.C., more than with the Brutalist style in which the rest of the official buildings have been constructed since then.

Why was there a break with this tradition?

While America, unlike Europe, did not have the need for rapid postwar reconstruction, the United States welcomed several architects during this period, often German refugees, who brought architectural modernism with them. The most influential were Walter Gropius, who taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Mies van der Rohe, who went to Chicago. They were the principal proponents of the style we know today as Brutalism.

This style was adopted by the federal government, which was looking to cut costs during World War II. We ended up with buildings constructed without any architectural merit whatsoever, like the State Department, which most Americans would hardly recognize. It’s just a building that was built on the cheap. After the war, this trend toward mediocrity continued, and the city became covered with these charmless boxes.

The irony is that he actually replaced classical architecture with another official style, which was de facto modernism.

A turning point came in 1962 when Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a young civil servant with the Department of Labour, published a document entitled “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.” This document advised against the adoption of an official style for federal buildings. These principles were never adopted as official policy, but they marked the beginning of modernist hegemony in federal architecture. By stipulating that there should be no official style, Moynihan was a way of rejecting classicism, which had been the government’s official style.

The irony is that he effectively replaced classical architecture with another official style, which was de facto modernism. This style was imposed using a coded language, stipulating that new projects should be built according to “the best contemporary forms.” Moynihan himself was an admirer of the Seagram Building, the iconic new modernist skyscraper in New York at the time, designed by Mies van der Rohe. This was the kind of architecture Moynihan wanted to promote.

Later, Moynihan regretted the excesses of modernism and became a fervent advocate of classical architecture. He played a pivotal role in saving the U.S. Customs House in New York, the immense Beaux-Arts building designed by Cass Gilbert. He influenced the design of the Reagan Building in the Federal Triangle, and he was proud of it. He believed that the only successful example of postwar Federal Modernist architecture was Dulles Airport, which, however, dates back to the Eisenhower presidency, before the adoption of the 1962 principles.

So it was an unofficial official architecture?

Yes, the guiding principles stipulated that architectural design should originate from professional architects. The government thus relinquished its choice to private firms. It’s as if the Department of Defense were asking Boeing what type of aircraft it should build. This reversal of authority lasted until very recently, until President Trump issued his executive order, which explicitly modifies the 1962 principles. The new principles stipulate that design must stem from the preferences and needs of the government and the American people, not from architectural professionals. This clarifies the situation. It is the clients—in this case, the government representing American taxpayers—who must have a say in the type of buildings constructed.

Is it possible to return to classical architecture? Do the skills still exist?

It’s not too late. A few years ago, a new neoclassical federal courthouse was built in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It was an exception among the new buildings, and the style was chosen only because an influential senator, Richard Shelby, fought against the federal agency overseeing the design. It’s a neoclassical building, with a Greek Revival pediment, that everyone admires. It shows that it’s still possible to build in this style, including in stone. The challenge is to build in a classical style of quality. The last thing we want is kitschy or parody architecture that looks like a Walt Disney set. I believe it’s possible to return to beautiful buildings that will fit into the historic urban fabric.

Do schools of architecture still exist?

A few institutions, such as the University of Notre Dame and the Catholic University of Washington, still teach classical architecture, but this is no longer the case for most American schools of architecture. This obviously poses a problem when it comes to finding architects to design contemporary classical buildings. Nevertheless, some self-taught architects still exist. For example, the original architect of the White House Ballroom, James McCrary, trained in modernism before joining a classical firm. There is still a demand in residential architecture. But we eagerly await seeing large, important public buildings constructed in a classical and traditional style.

The new decree does not impose a particular style nationwide. It merely stipulates that special attention must be paid to style. But there are many styles: classicism encompasses neoclassical, Art Deco, Pueblo revival, and Romanesque. It leaves a wide range of architectural styles to choose from.

What are the plans for Washington, D.C.? Will you be adopting McMillan’s urban development plan?

My organization contacted the Catholic University School of Architecture to explore how to replace the Forrestal Building, a massive Brutalist structure, with new Smithsonian museums. The students expanded on this idea and developed a plan to demolish many Brutalist buildings in the area and open up the view from the National Mall to the banks of the Potomac River. Many of these mid-century government buildings are in a state of advanced disrepair. They require hundreds of millions of dollars in much-needed repairs, and one might question whether it wouldn’t be more cost-effective to replace them. Furthermore, many government employees now work remotely, and the City of Washington, D.C., itself is looking to redevelop this area near the National Mall.

This part of the city is dead, cut off from all access to the river. There is a real convergence of interests, both on the part of the federal government and the state government, to completely rebuild this neighborhood. What could be the largest urban planning project in the United States would allow us to correct the mistakes of the past and invent a new urbanism with better buildings. There is so much to be done. My organization also supports a project to renovate Penn Station in New York in a classical style strongly inspired by the original. If it succeeds, it would send a powerful message, not only in terms of architecture, but also for American civilization, that we are no longer afraid to build grand classical buildings again.

This is also an issue on which there is a bipartisan consensus. In 2020, my organization commissioned a survey which revealed that 72% of respondents preferred a classic and traditional style for federal buildings, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or political affiliation.

The only real opposition comes from architects, who feel attacked. They, moreover, often live in traditional houses. The extreme modernist, Rem Koolhaas, was forced to admit that he lived in a Georgian-style townhouse in Mayfair. Pei lived in a brownstone house in Manhattan, and Norman Foster owns a magnificent château in France.

To quote the National Civic Art Society’s press release:

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has appointed National Civic Art Society president Justin Shubow chairman of the new, first-of-its-kind Beautifying Transportation Infrastructure Council. 

As the U.S. Department of Transportation announced in October:

The Council will advise the Secretary on policy and design opportunities to build beautiful structures and restore the beauty of key transportation infrastructure, including highways, bridges, and transit hubs. . . .  The Council will identify best practices, develop aesthetic performance metrics, and provide guidance on projects that enhance public spaces and reflect local character. . . .

The creation of this Council aligns with President Trump’s Executive Order (E.O.) 14344, Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again, which aims to update the policies guiding federal architecture design. 

Shubow helped draft that Executive Order, issued in August 2025, which reoriented federal architecture from modernism to classical and traditional design. He also prompted and helped draft a similar Executive Order, Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, issued by President Trump during his first term.

The Council’s first meeting, which Secretary Duffy will attend, will take place at USDOT on February 2nd from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM EST. The meeting will stream live online via Zoom, but members of the public must register in advance to watch. Register at https://usdot.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_7gP6ZdlGSYeDFFvufdQOAA .

Shubow commented on his recent appointment, “It is a true honor to be appointed chairman of the Beautifying Transportation Infrastructure Council. From the Golden Gate Bridge to the Merritt Parkway, from Dulles Airport to Cincinnati Union Terminal, America has constructed some of the most aesthetically pleasing infrastructure in the world. Our country did it before, and we can do it again. Beauty in design must not be an afterthought, dismissed as an alleged luxury or anachronism in the name of pure functionalism. Yet for decades far too much of our built environment has been soulless and ugly. Harmony with the natural and historic landscape matters, as does urban revitalization. People want to live, work, and travel in lovable, inspiring places. I look forward to working with the Council in providing guidance on the aesthetics of design.”

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Founded in 2002, the National Civic Art Society is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that educates and empowers civic leaders in the promotion of public art and architecture worthy of our great Republic. We do this by advancing the classical tradition in architecture, urbanism, and their allied arts. Through our programs and initiatives we guide government agencies and officials; assist practitioners; and educate students and the general public in the preservation and creation of beautiful, dignified public buildings, monuments, and spaces.

On January 21, 2026, The Wall Street Journal today published an op-ed by me in which I call for the architecture of the new RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. to be classical. See below.

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Washington Needs a Stadium as Grand as Harvard’s

A classical Roman- or Greek-inspired arena would suit the capital’s spirit and history.

The largest private development in the District of Columbia’s history is under way: a new Robert F. Kennedy Stadium that will be home to the Commanders football team. At an estimated cost of $3.8 billion, it will replace the rusting, abandoned hulk that sits at the east end of East Capitol Street, fronting the Anacostia River. Given the stadium’s prime location, President Trump said the replacement is “going to be an architect’s dream.”

During a National Capital Planning Commission meeting last month, White House staff secretary Will Scharf said that he hopes the structure “incorporates architectural features in keeping with the capital more generally—classical, neoclassical elements that will align it with the capital that it will essentially overlook.”

I hope so too. The project offers a once-in-a-century opportunity for Washington to achieve its potential as a classical city inspired by Republican Rome—the intent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

The Roman influence runs deep. The U.S. Capitol was spelled with an “O” rather than an “A” in reference to ancient Rome’s Capitoline Hill. The tributary of the Potomac River cutting across the land was called Tiber Creek after the river that flowed through the Eternal City. The Jefferson Memorial and the Capitol itself are modeled on the Pantheon.

The capital is awe-inspiring thanks to Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s 1791 master plan, perfected by the 1901-02 McMillan Plan creating the National Mall and monumental core as we know them. A grand east-west cross axis defines Washington, running west from the Anacostia to the Capitol, through the National Mall, past the Washington Monument, and to the Lincoln Memorial at the Potomac.

Yet the capital falls short of its founders’ vision. The Capitol building ought to be the symbolic center of the city—as it is in the street grid with its four quadrants—but the avenue running east is underdeveloped. A classical stadium at its end would counterbalance the Greek-temple-inspired Lincoln Memorial at the opposite terminus. The Capitol would be the fulcrum.

A classical stadium would be an iconic structure. It would invigorate fans and visitors. It would be lucrative for the team’s owners and a catalyst for neighborhood development. The design would stand out from other new stadiums around the world, many of which look like experimental modern art projects. The glitzy Sphere suits Las Vegas; a new football arena along classical lines would befit Washington, which Frederick Douglass praised for “its lofty domes and stately pillars.”

Building a classical stadium would comport with the spirit of Mr. Trump’s August executive order “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again,” which reorients the design of government buildings from modernist to classical and traditional styles. As that directive states, the Founders “wanted America’s public buildings to inspire the American people and encourage civic virtue. . . . They sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions.” The order recognizes that classical public buildings, monuments and memorials are popular with Americans, who associate them with our democracy’s highest ideals.

There’s also the question of civic urbanism—an approach to city planning that puts citizenship and community at the center. The new stadium will be the heart of a 180-acre mixed-use development likely containing housing and park space. Would Washingtonians rather live next to a structure that looks like a gigantic Martian spaceship or a work of beauty that reflects the genius loci, the spirit of the place? If there’s any doubt, the developers ought to survey the public. They could create renderings of modernist vs. traditional designs and let the people decide.

A classical stadium would echo another new, planned gateway to the city: the monumental Roman-inspired arch the president promises to build in the traffic circle near Arlington Memorial Bridge and the Lincoln Memorial. The magnificent proposed structure is reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and will celebrate America’s semiquincentennial. This arch will continue the aforementioned east-west axis to the far side of the Potomac.

The idea of a classical football stadium isn’t new to the U.S. Its many precedents include the Los Angeles Coliseum (a 1984 Summer Olympics site), Harvard Stadium and Chicago’s original Soldier Field. Other countries have also recently considered building classical stadiums. In 2023, an architecture firm proposed an elegant Colosseum-like rugby stadium in Bath, England, keeping with the city’s historic Georgian architecture.

There’s even precedent for such a project in Washington. In 1911, architect Ward Brown proposed building a marble-and-concrete Roman-style stadium that could seat 87,000 people at what is now the site of the Lincoln Memorial.

The location of the Robert F. Kennedy Stadium cries out for a horseshoe design open to the west, permitting spectators to look out toward a majestic vista and setting sun. The design could be modeled on the U-shaped Panathenaic Stadium in Athens—the quintessential example of pure classical architecture reconstructed in the second century and entirely clad in marble.

It doesn’t necessarily augur well that the Commanders have hired HKS, a modernist architecture firm that has designed a handful of new stadiums, as the lead designer. The team recently released initial renderings. Lamely alluding to classical columns, they’re uninspired, to say the least. But even a mega-firm that typically builds in a futuristic style can form a partnership with a design architect who’s an expert in classicism.

Working together, the Trump administration, the Commanders’ owners and other stakeholders have a rare opportunity to build a glorious stadium that will be a win for business and a gift to the city.

On December 13, 2025, National Review published an essay by me on Frank Gehry’s legacy, including the National Eisenhower Memorial.

The Complicated Legacy of Frank Gehry’s Work

The legendary architect, who died last week, was an artist of self-expression.

Frank Gehry, the most famous and lauded architect in America, died last week at the age of 96. He exemplified the “starchitect,” a heady mix of celebrity, brand-name design, and signature aesthetics meant to wow. With perhaps false modesty, he complained about being “geniused to death.”

Based in Los Angeles, where he was immersed in the hipster art scene, he was so well known that he played himself in a cameo on The Simpsons, designed concrete cufflinks for Tiffany & Co. and a silly hat for Lady Gaga, and was mentioned by Hillary Clinton in 2013 in a cryptic comment on the need for a new international order: “We need a new architecture for this new world, more Frank Gehry than formal Greek.”

It is wrong for traditionalists, whether in politics or architecture, to reflexively dismiss Gehry. Popularity ought not to breed contempt, and the domain of architecture is capacious enough to contain singular, yes, geniuses. Consider that, while overall critical, the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton had some positive things to say about the modernist Mies van der Rohe. The challenge, however, is to remember that exceptions like Gehry ought not to set the rule. The cult of genius that the architect triggered caused a plague of alien buildings that look like they landed from outer space: object buildings meant to shock, ignoring urban context and shirking the responsibility to build human settlements that serve the common good. None of this starchitecture, including Gehry’s, contributes to or harmonizes with the urban fabric.

Gehry said, “I try to rid myself and the other members of the firm, of the burden of the culture. . . . There are no rules, no right or wrong. I’m confused as to what’s ugly and what’s pretty.” In his hands, he could — at times — make this aesthetic anomie work (putting context aside). In the hands of mere mortals, failure is mostly inevitable. As the Romans would say, “Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.” (“What is permissible for Jupiter is not permissible for an ox.”)

Although uneven in his output, at its best (as in the dynamic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and billowing Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A.), he was a magician conjuring radical new forms suggesting many simultaneous meanings: sails, fish, whales, flowers, artichokes, knife blades. His playful alchemy incorporated materials and techniques such as warped stainless-steel panels that could be constructed only with the help of aerospace computer technology. (He himself was a pilot and sailor.) His works could be exuberant and ethereal, achieving a feeling of lightness, as in his Fondation Louis Vuitton, despite their size. They also sometimes combine menace and joy, as in the “Fred and Ginger” Dancing House in Prague, where the external rebar in “Ginger’s” body is tortured by what appears to be crushing force from her dance partner pulling her waist toward him. At their worst (as in the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle), his buildings are jumbled mishmashes of colliding forms that look like the crumpled aluminum foil in parodies of his work.

To his credit, his Bilbao Guggenheim — an explosion of shimmering curved titanium tiles reminiscent of a whale the size of the Leviathan — was the first popular avant-garde building of its era. Over 2 million people visited it in its first two years. Seventy percent said they came to see the building rather than the art it contained. The building thus served a purpose other than being an economic boon to the rusting, post-industrial city. (Most other cities that tried to copy the so-called “Bilbao Effect” resulted in economic failure.) Like other contemporary architectural spectacles intended to serve as museums, the building is more moving and beautiful than the forgettable contemporary art within.

But the biggest criticism one can make of Gehry is that he was in the wrong line of work. He was a talented expressionist sculptor, not an architect. In his own words: “I said to myself, ‘Artists have trouble with scale in the city because the city is such a large scale. No one ever commissions artists to make sixty-story sculptures, and until one of them makes a sixty-story sculpture, their works will not stand beside the Empire State Building and mean anything.”

He repeatedly said he wished he had been an artist: “If I have a big envy in my life, it’s about painters. I wish I was a painter. . . . There’s the canvas, it’s on your easel, you got a brush and a palette of colors, and what do you do? What’s the first move? I love that dangerous place.” It seems that Gehry was turned astray from his true vocation by his college ceramics professor, who encouraged him to leave art for architecture. Despite de facto being a sculptor by profession, painting was always his biggest artistic influence.

Gehry is also to be commended for rejecting the architectural modernism in which he was schooled. It was his discovery of the great medieval churches of Europe that led to his conversion. His architecture school, he said, “had only a token class in architectural history and a token class in art history at USC at the time. Modernism was the mantra, and I bought into that. That’s how I was trained. When I went to Paris in 1960, I looked at things every weekend. That’s when I saw the great cathedrals — Notre Dame, Chartres, and others — and I thought, Holy sh**, I’ve been had.” His subsequent work represented not a return to history (other than the influence of the Baroque architect Borromini, with his convulsing geometry), but it demonstrated that modernism had come to a dead end.

Despite the modernist commandments, Gehry spurned any attempt to follow the purported Zeitgeist: It was his spirit he followed, not that of the times. He also rejected the dictum that “Form follows function” — the modernist idea that the form of a building is to be determined solely by its purpose. Gehry’s buildings look nothing like their program. In addition, instead of rigid modernist rectilinearity, his shapes went to the opposite extreme: non-Euclidean, swooping, curving, crushed, distorted. Abandoning modernist puritanism — restrained in color, form, and materials — he was licentious.

Some of his experiments in design were functional failures: The Disney Concert Hall burned passersby with 140-degree death rays, the MIT Stata Center leaked and cracked so badly that there was a large lawsuit that settled out of court, a building at Case Western Reserve University dropped perilous snow and ice on visitors, and the interior of his crumpled Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health disoriented the neurologically impaired patients. Dysfunction followed dysform. “Life is chaotic, dangerous, and surprising. Buildings should reflect that,” he said. At times, the danger was made literal.

Like many modern artists, Gehry was autobiographically driven, using his past and his (sometime tortured) psyche as his material. For instance, Gehry (né Goldberg) said his frequent use of fish forms derived from his memories of the live carp his grandmother would keep in the bathtub for preparation as gefilte fish. His self-renovated house — incorporating rebarbative cheap corrugated metal, chain link, and plywood — was inspired by his experience in his working-class grandfather’s hardware store.

Art and architecture was for Gehry a form of self-expression, which explains why he was such a poor choice for his only completed project in Washington, D.C.: the National Eisenhower Memorial. Gehry the self-portraitist agreed to take on the task of capturing the essence of someone else, someone far different. It was an odd pairing. The flamboyant Southern Californian was required to lionize a stolid Midwesterner who hated modern art. Just as bad, the purveyor of architectural chaos was working in a city hallmarked by classical order.

From their very first meeting, the organizers of the memorial said they wanted someone like Gehry to design the memorial. And lo and behold, years later he “won” the invitation-only competition that had only 44 entrants. A House Oversight investigation into the competition later found that the jury was unimpressed by the finalists, which included Gehry. In the jury’s words, “None of the visions expressed the whole essence of Eisenhower. The schemes as presented were mediocre for such an important memorial.” Nonetheless, a subsequent evaluation board would give Gehry the job for reasons that have never been made clear.

After Gehry unveiled his design in 2011, a major controversy exploded with fierce opposition from members of the Eisenhower family, Congress (both Democrats and Republicans), and architectural traditionalists. The initial design consisted of three 80-tall steel “tapestries” (woven screens) with the largest being 450-feet long upheld by equally tall ten-foot-wide stone-clad cylinders. The two smaller tapestries, set at right angles to the ends of the main tapestry to form a kind of square landscaped plaza, were each bigger than a basketball court and blocked the viewshed to and from the Capitol. The tapestry screens depicted the Kansas landscape in winter (Ike’s home state), a bleak anonymous scene that might as well have been Kazakhstan.

Perhaps most outrageous, the sole statue of Eisenhower, sited on the ground at the center of the main tapestry, depicted him as a life-size seven-year-old barefoot boy seated on a plank — inspired by Eisenhower’s first political speech after returning from World War II, in which he reminisced about “the dreams of a barefoot boy.” (Eisenhower would later admit his speech was hokum.) The design was topsy turvy its in scale and symbolism, and it intensely clashed with the heroic classical memorial tradition in the capital. The design, essentially with a void at its core, was attacked for being a monument to Gehry himself.

Congress held up all funding for four years, a bill advanced from committee that would have effectively killed the design, and the scheme was pilloried by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and National Capital Planning Commission. The New Yorker reported that the design “managed to achieve something rare in Washington: in true bipartisan spirit, almost everyone hates it.”  

Ultimately, Gehry was forced to remove the two smaller tapestries (leaving two free-standing cylinders like smokestacks) but threatened to strip his name from the memorial if the main tapestry was eliminated. He also added figurative statues to his design: wooden, hyper-literal tableaus of Eisenhower as president and Supreme Allied Commander. The barefoot boy was replaced by a statue of a teenage Eisenhower, with odd orangutan proportions, shunted off to a corner.

The impasse only came to an end when former Secretary of State James Baker brokered a backroom deal with the Eisenhower family. The Kansas landscape was replaced by a depiction of Normandy Beach in the present day, which satisfied the Eisenhowers who wanted more emphasis on the president’s accomplishments. They dropped their opposition, and therefore so did Congress. Gehry was not even a party to the compromise negotiations.

In the end, the memorial opened in 2020 at a cost of $145 million, with just $15 million from private sources — this despite the fact that the Eisenhower Commission initially said only 20 percent of the cost would be paid with tax dollars. Gehry, whose name is inscribed on the memorial, did not speak at the opening ceremony.

When you visit during the day, the image on the tapestry — a scribble scrabble sketch by Gehry himself—is not even apparent. At night, when the screen is illuminated, it is impossible to tell what is depicted other than abstract expressionism with Gehry’s “signature” hand-drawing on it.

Reviews of the memorial have not been kind. New York magazine’s Justin Davidson, despite being highly sympathetic to Gehry’s oeuvre, called the design “a wan anticlimax . . . a work of civic architecture that fails to quicken the patriotic pulse or add much to the landscape of memory in downtown D.C.” Edward Rothstein likewise panned the design in the Wall Street Journal: “Some objects are inflated beyond all significance; others are so diminished they seem afterthoughts.”

But the most important review is the saddest one: Few people ever visit the memorial, despite its prime location across the street from the National Mall and Air and Space Museum, which gets 3 million visitors a year.

In his otherwise idolizing biography of Gehry, Paul Goldberger, addressing the memorial fight, wrote that the architect “felt few people in the architecture community seemed willing to defend him. . . . Frank, anxious as ever about his reputation, did not consider the possibility that many of his peers were simply not enamored of the memorial design, and that it was their architectural judgment, not any lack of loyalty, that was preventing them from speaking out. For all his lifelong worry about what people thought of him, it did not occur to him that the architects he respected, and who he knew respected him, might have simply viewed this one as a miss, as one of those moments when Babe Ruth strikes out.”

All of this raises the question: Why did Gehry not pull out? Why fight Congress, the family, and public opinion? Why accept this compromise? In 1964, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s family denounced the selected design of the FDR memorial saying that they hated it, and the president would have hated it too. Not long after, the architects graciously resigned from their commission.

Can one attribute Gehry’s stubbornness to arrogance, to hubris? Or could it be that on that huge tapestry, he finally got what he wanted his entire professional life: a canvas with a painterly illustration in his own hand?

On September 15, 2025, the Danish newspaper Politiken published a profile of me (original article in Danish here). English translation by the reporter:

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He Hates Brutalism – and Loves Trump’s Architecture Executive Order

Donald Trump’s executive order is, for Justin Shubow, a long-awaited and welcome break with the development that, since the 1960s, has set the course for federal construction in the United States.

By Anders Tornsø Jørgensen

Justin Shubow has rarely had more reason to celebrate.

For U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a executive order titled “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again.” It states that future federal buildings—ranging from courthouses to government offices—should as a rule be constructed in “traditional or classical architecture.”

Modern architecture, such as brutalism and deconstructivism, has for far too long been playgrounds for “the architectural elite, but not for the American people whom the buildings are intended to serve,” the executive order declares. Should an architect nevertheless deviate, the president must be notified.

“We are at a decisive turning point in federal architecture. This marks the end of modernism’s hegemony,” says Justin Shubow from his home in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

He feels that his years-long struggle has finally borne fruit.

Since 2011, Shubow has led the organization National Civic Art Society, which fights for the return of classicism. On its website, modernism is dismissed as “parasitic architecture,” while both NPR and The New York Times have labeled Shubow “one of the fiercest critics of modern architecture”—a title he wears as a badge of honor.

“As Winston Churchill said: We shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us. I believe our buildings influence our consciousness—they shape how we think, feel, and act. Classical architecture reminds us to think in centuries rather than only in the present.”

According to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and several international architecture professors interviewed by Politiken, Shubow played a central role in drafting Trump’s order and his organization includes architect James McCrery, who recently drew attention for his work on a new White House ballroom.

Shubow himself does not wish to comment on his involvement in the order.

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The Fall from Grace

When the U.S. capital was established, the nation’s founders deliberately carved the republic’s ideals of democracy, civic virtue, and self-determination into marble and columns. That ambition lives on in Washington’s iconic buildings—from the White House and the Supreme Court to the Lincoln Memorial.

But 1962 marked, for Shubow, the beginning of an aesthetic decline, when new guidelines for federal architecture were introduced. They insisted that the state should not impose an official style.

“For far too long we have built sad, ugly, and unpopular buildings. President Trump recognizes that the classical tradition is  timeless, and that it set the standard for 150 years,” says Shubow.

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Alarm bells are ringing at the industry group The American Institute of Architects (AIA), which would prefer to keep the 1962 guidelines.

“AIA is deeply concerned about any change that removes community influence, imposes official federal style requirements, restricts artistic freedom, or adds new bureaucratic barriers to the construction of public buildings,” writes press chief Matt Tinder in an email to Politiken.

Shubow rejects the criticism, emphasizing that the decree preserves regional character and diversity.

“The word ‘traditional’ is defined broadly in the decree, and includes, for example, Pueblo Revival found in the American Southwest. It’s not a demand that there must be pediments and columns everywhere. Even the word ‘classical’ is defined broadly and encompasses both Beaux-Arts and Art Deco—not only neoclassicism,” he says.

“The most far-reaching requirements apply to Washington, D.C., where new federal buildings must be classical. But I don’t see any new projects on the way there.”

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Popular Architecture

Shubow is neither an architect nor a designer—and he sees that as his strength.

“I was never brainwashed in architecture school,” as he puts it.

According to Shubow, this gives him a perspective on buildings closer to ordinary people’s than to professionals’. And that perspective is needed, he believes. For there is a fundamental divide: architects’ tastes on one side, the public’s preferences on the other.

As an example, he highlights a 2020 survey conducted by Harris Poll for the National Civic Art Society among more than 2,000 Americans, which showed that 72 percent preferred traditional over modern architecture for federal buildings.

But according to Cameron Logan, architectural historian at the University of Sydney in Australia, the survey says more about people’s immediate aesthetic preferences than about architecture in practice.

“Many will point to traditional buildings as the most beautiful,” he says.

“But the question is whether they would still choose them if it meant poorer environmental performance, worse functionality, or higher costs.”

For Shubow, however, aesthetics are decisive. He emphasizes that classical architecture is sustainable in itself because the buildings last longer and can still be fully functional.

“Just look at the Capitol—a 200-year-old building that still functions flawlessly,” he says.

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The Strongman

According to Daniel Abramson, professor of architecture at Boston University, Trump’s interest in classical architecture is closely tied to his political project.

“It gives Trump a narrative of authority and tradition, and it fits into his overarching strategy of undermining the established elites, including in architecture,” he says.

Samuel Sadow, assistant professor in the Department of Art at American University in Washington, D.C., points out that classicism in itself is not inherently linked to authoritarian regimes. Architectural languages—whether classical or modernist—can equally be used by a dictator for propagandistic or repressive purposes.

That said, he sees Trump’s initiative as part of a familiar trend:

“A ‘national style’ in architecture has undoubtedly been a hallmark of authoritarian regimes in the past. Trump’s attempt to do the same—both in his first term and now again—fits quite naturally into his broader authoritarian initiatives and statements on free speech, gender and diversity, immigration, and law enforcement,” says Samuel Sadow.

Shubow rejects this.

According to him, architecture is not a political issue for most Americans. He recalls that Barack Obama, in 2008, accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in front of a classical Greek backdrop, without anyone crying authoritarianism.

“Granted, Trump is a deeply polarizing figure. But I think that when people see pictures of the buildings that have actually been constructed, they will realize that something has gone seriously wrong.”

Here are five buildings Justin Shubow dislikes (photos of each)

San Francisco Federal Building. Designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects, the San Francisco building was completed in 2007. “It looks like a spaceship about to kill you with laser beams,” Shubow says.

Orrin G. Hatch United States Courthouse. Designed by Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer & Partners, the Salt Lake City courthouse has, according to Shubow, earned the local nickname “Borg Cube,” after the villains in Star Trek.

J. Edgar Hoover Building. The FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., completed in 1975, is an example of Brutalist architecture. “A colossus I call the Ministry of Fear,” Shubow says.

Robert C. Weaver Federal Building. Completed in 1968, this Brutalist landmark houses the Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to Shubow, three different secretaries have described it as “ten basements stacked on top of each other.”

Alfonse M. D’Amato United States Courthouse. Designed by Richard Meier and opened in 2000, it is the third-largest federal courthouse in the United States. “Even The New York Times’ own architecture critic wrote that the building had an uncanny feel,” Shubow says.