On Mastering a Profession

I always did wonder how we lost the glory of Main Justice. Or the Federal Trade Commission. I should have known that, as with all things in modern life, the reason can be found in some stray bit of official text: “The design must flow from the architectural profession to the government. And not vice versa.” It will be fun to watch the AIA try to argue that anyone–anyone–except card-carrying members thereof actually likes the profession’s contemporary output. To read “Benjamin Forgey, the former architecture critic for The Washington Post,” pointing to I.M. Pei’s addition of a “triangular design influenced by modernist thought” to John Russell Pope’s Roman-Pantheon-inspired National Gallery of Art is to get a premonition of just how badly this is going to go for them. Of course, I’d rather not have the next federal building look like Trump Tower. But are the greatest examples of contemporary academic architecture any better? Is Dancing House really better? It’s not all that hard imagining that he might have designed it.

But this, to choose an example of beautiful architecture at random, is better. And would be covered by the executive order.