President Donald Trump’s extravagant $400-million White House ballroom and proposed triumphal arch were always going to attract the most attention, but in Tennessee officials unveiled a far more revealing illustration of the US president’s future architectural legacy.
CNN News writes:
Set to open in 2030, Chattanooga’s new courthouse will be a muscular Art Deco Greek temple… It’s the first major new design announced by America’s federal building agency since Trump’s executive order, ‘Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again.’ Its beauty is therefore now a matter of both architectural and political debate…
Dubbing the style ‘Greco-Deco,’ the National Civic Art Society (NCAS) lauded Chattanooga’s new courthouse as a ‘showpiece’ of Trump’s executive order (a directive that the organization, incidentally, helped draft)…
According to Kevin D. Murphy, a professor and chair of history of art at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University, the new design evokes a version of 1930s classicism ‘associated with fascist states.’…
… whether Chattanooga’s sturdy new courthouse is a dangerous precedent or a sensible safeguard of civic tradition — may depend as much on your politics as your taste.
