Do you need an antidote to the White House of today? I just finished binging all seven seasons of the The West Wing. Yes, it scooped up many weeks, but boy was it worth it. As the impeachment, the campaigns, our policies foreign and domestic played out, there was the prescient series—that I had never really seen-- which eerily mirrored the mess of our time. Aaron Sorkin presented us with an insider view culled from real insiders like DeeDee Myers, Clinton’s press rep. I found myself smiling, crying, and impressed by the consistency of the writing and acting even if the signature ‘walking and talking’ made me want to strap Fitbits to the cast. If only.
Should Trump decide how our federal buildings look?
The White House has announced an executive order called "Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again" which would establish neoclassical architecture as the default for all federal buildings, e.g., courthouses, post offices. Will MFBBA become an acronym like MAGA indicating a time when the country was falling under the sway of a despot who wanted to remake an imaginary US to his own personal taste? Now that Trump has been exonerated in the impeachment trial he feels free to attack another element in the culture wars: how our world looks. Does anyone remember when Prince Charles tried this? There are very good reasons to have contemporary architects pay attention to context but that doesn't mean they have to conform to a certain style. Its true mistakes have been made. But styles go in and out: a Paul Rudolph's Government Service Center in Boston, now endangered after being reviled for many years, is now newly beautiful in the eyes of many lovers of brutalism.