Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, 83739-83744 [2020-28605]

Agencies

• Executive Office of the President

[Federal Register Volume 85, Number 247 (Wednesday, December 23, 2020)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 83739-83744]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2020-28605]




                        Presidential Documents 



Federal Register / Vol. 85 , No. 247 / Wednesday, December 23, 2020 / 
Presidential Documents

___________________________________________________________________

Title 3--
The President

[[Page 83739]]

                Executive Order 13967 of December 18, 2020

                
Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture

                By the authority vested in me as President by the 
                Constitution and the laws of the United States of 
                America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

                Section 1. Purpose. Societies have long recognized the 
                importance of beautiful public architecture. Ancient 
                Greek and Roman public buildings were designed to be 
                sturdy and useful, and also to beautify public spaces 
                and inspire civic pride. Throughout the Middle Ages and 
                the Renaissance, public architecture continued to serve 
                these purposes. The 1309 constitution of the City of 
                Siena required that ``[w]hoever rules the City must 
                have the beauty of the City as his foremost 
                preoccupation . . . because it must provide pride, 
                honor, wealth, and growth to the Sienese citizens, as 
                well as pleasure and happiness to visitors from 
                abroad.'' Three centuries later, the great British 
                Architect Sir Christopher Wren declared that ``public 
                buildings [are] the ornament of a country. 
                [Architecture] establishes a Nation, draws people and 
                commerce, makes the people love their native country . 
                . . Architecture aims at eternity[.]''

                Notable Founding Fathers agreed with these assessments 
                and attached great importance to Federal civic 
                architecture. They wanted America's public buildings to 
                inspire the American people and encourage civic virtue. 
                President George Washington and Secretary of State 
                Thomas Jefferson consciously modeled the most important 
                buildings in Washington, DC, on the classical 
                architecture of ancient Athens and Rome. 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.

                Washington and Jefferson personally oversaw the 
                competitions to design the Capitol Building and the 
                White House. Under the direction and following the 
                vision of these two founders, Pierre Charles L'Enfant 
                designed the Nation's capital as a classical city. The 
                promise of his design for the city was fulfilled by the 
                1902 McMillan Plan, which created the National Mall and 
                the Monumental Core as we know them.

                For approximately a century and a half following 
                America's founding, America's Federal architecture 
                continued to be characterized by beautiful and beloved 
                buildings of largely, though not exclusively, classical 
                design. Examples include the Second Bank of the United 
                States in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Pioneer 
                Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, and the Thurgood 
                Marshall United States Courthouse in New York City, New 
                York. In Washington, DC, classical buildings such as 
                the White House, the Capitol Building, the Supreme 
                Court, the Department of the Treasury, and the Lincoln 
                Memorial have become iconic symbols of our system of 
                government. These cherished landmarks, built to endure 
                for centuries, have become an important part of our 
                civic life.

                In the 1950s, the Federal Government largely replaced 
                traditional designs for new construction with modernist 
                ones. This practice became official policy after the Ad 
                Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space proposed what 
                became known as the Guiding Principles for Federal 
                Architecture (Guiding Principles) in 1962. The Guiding 
                Principles implicitly discouraged classical and other 
                traditional designs known for their beauty, declaring 
                instead that the Government should use ``contemporary'' 
                designs.

[[Page 83740]]

                The Federal architecture that ensued, overseen by the 
                General Services Administration (GSA), was often 
                unpopular with Americans. The new buildings ranged from 
                the undistinguished to designs even GSA now admits many 
                in the public found unappealing. In Washington, DC, new 
                Federal buildings visibly clashed with the existing 
                classical architecture. Some of these structures, such 
                as the Hubert H. Humphrey Department of Health and 
                Human Services Building and the Robert C. Weaver 
                Department of Housing and Urban Development Building, 
                were controversial, attracting widespread criticism for 
                their Brutalist designs.

                In 1994, GSA responded to this widespread criticism 
                that the buildings it had been commissioning lacked 
                distinction by establishing the Design Excellence 
                Program. The GSA intended that program to advance the 
                Guiding Principles' mandate that Federal architecture 
                ``provide visual testimony to the dignity, enterprise, 
                vigor, and stability of the American Government.'' 
                Unfortunately, the program has not met this goal.

                Under the Design Excellence Program, GSA has often 
                selected designs by prominent architects with little 
                regard for local input or regional aesthetic 
                preferences. The resulting Federal architecture 
                sometimes impresses the architectural elite, but not 
                the American people who the buildings are meant to 
                serve. Many of these new Federal buildings are not even 
                visibly identifiable as civic buildings.

                For example, GSA selected an architect to design the 
                San Francisco Federal Building who describes his 
                designs as ``art-for-art's-sake'' architecture, 
                intended primarily for architects to appreciate. While 
                elite architects praised the resulting building, many 
                San Franciscans consider it one of the ugliest 
                structures in their city. Similarly, GSA selected a 
                modernist architect to design Salt Lake City's new 
                Federal courthouse. The architectural establishment and 
                its professional organizations praised his unique 
                creation, but many local residents considered it ugly 
                and inconsistent with its surroundings. In Orlando, 
                Florida, a coalition of judges, court employees, and 
                civic leaders opposed GSA's preferred modernist design 
                for the George C. Young Federal Courthouse. They 
                believed it lacked the dignity a Federal courthouse 
                should embody. The GSA nonetheless imposed this design 
                over their objections.

                With a limited number of exceptions, such as the 
                Tuscaloosa Federal Building and Courthouse and the 
                Corpus Christi Federal Courthouse, the Federal 
                Government has largely stopped building beautiful 
                buildings. In Washington, DC, Federal architecture has 
                become a discordant mixture of classical and modernist 
                designs.

                It is time to update the policies guiding Federal 
                architecture to address these problems and ensure that 
                architects designing Federal buildings serve their 
                clients, the American people. New Federal building 
                designs should, like America's beloved landmark 
                buildings, uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire 
                the human spirit, ennoble the United States, command 
                respect from the general public, and, as appropriate, 
                respect the architectural heritage of a region. They 
                should also be visibly identifiable as civic buildings 
                and should be selected with input from the local 
                community.

                Classical and other traditional architecture, as 
                practiced both historically and by today's architects, 
                have proven their ability to meet these design criteria 
                and to more than satisfy today's functional, technical, 
                and sustainable needs. Their use should be encouraged 
                instead of discouraged.

                Encouraging classical and traditional architecture does 
                not exclude using most other styles of architecture, 
                where appropriate. Care must be taken, however, to 
                ensure that all Federal building designs command 
                respect of the general public for their beauty and 
                visual embodiment of America's ideals.

[[Page 83741]]

                Sec. 2. Policy. (a) Applicable Federal public buildings 
                should uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the 
                human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command 
                respect from the general public. They should also be 
                visually identifiable as civic buildings and, as 
                appropriate, respect regional architectural heritage. 
                Architecture--with particular regard for traditional 
                and classical architecture--that meets the criteria set 
                forth in this subsection is the preferred architecture 
                for applicable Federal public buildings. In the 
                District of Columbia, classical architecture shall be 
                the preferred and default architecture for Federal 
                public buildings absent exceptional factors 
                necessitating another kind of architecture.

                    (b) Where the architecture of applicable Federal 
                public buildings diverges from the preferred 
                architecture set forth in subsection (a) of this 
                section, great care and consideration must be taken to 
                choose a design that commands respect from the general 
                public and clearly conveys to the general public the 
                dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of America's 
                system of self-government.
                    (c) When renovating, reducing, or expanding 
                applicable Federal public buildings that do not meet 
                the criteria set forth in subsection (a) of this 
                section, the feasibility and potential expense of 
                building redesign to meet those criteria should be 
                examined. Where feasible and economical, such redesign 
                should be given substantial consideration, especially 
                with regard to the building's exterior.
                    (d) GSA should seek input from the future users of 
                applicable public buildings and the general public in 
                the community where such buildings will be located 
                before selecting an architectural firm or design style.

                Sec. 3. Definitions. For the purposes of this order:

                    (a) ``Applicable Federal public building'' means:

(i) all Federal courthouses and agency headquarters;

(ii) all Federal public buildings in the District of Columbia; and

(iii) all other Federal public buildings that cost or are expected to cost 
more than $50 million in 2020 dollars to design, build, and finish, but 
does not include infrastructure projects or land ports of entry.

                    (b) ``Brutalist'' means the style of architecture 
                that grew out of the early 20th-century modernist 
                movement that is characterized by a massive and block-
                like appearance with a rigid geometric style and large-
                scale use of exposed poured concrete.
                    (c) ``Classical architecture'' means the 
                architectural tradition derived from the forms, 
                principles, and vocabulary of the architecture of Greek 
                and Roman antiquity, and as later developed and 
                expanded upon by such Renaissance architects as 
                Alberti, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Palladio; such 
                Enlightenment masters as Robert Adam, John Soane, and 
                Christopher Wren; such 19th-century architects as 
                Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Robert Mills, and Thomas U. 
                Walter; and such 20th-century practitioners as Julian 
                Abele, Daniel Burnham, Charles F. McKim, John Russell 
                Pope, Julia Morgan, and the firm of Delano and Aldrich. 
                Classical architecture encompasses such styles as 
                Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-
                Arts, and Art Deco.
                    (d) ``Deconstructivist'' means the style of 
                architecture generally known as ``deconstructivism'' 
                that emerged during the late 1980s that subverts the 
                traditional values of architecture through such 
                features as fragmentation, disorder, discontinuity, 
                distortion, skewed geometry, and the appearance of 
                instability.
                    (e) ``General public'' means members of the public 
                who are not:

(i) artists, architects, engineers, art or architecture critics, 
instructors or professors of art or architecture, or members of the 
building industry; or

(ii) affiliated with any interest group, trade association, or any other 
organization whose membership is financially affected by decisions 
involving the design, construction, or remodeling of public buildings.

[[Page 83742]]

                    (f) ``Officer'' has the meaning given that term in 
                section 2104 of title 5, United States Code.
                    (g) ``Public building'' has the meaning given that 
                term in section 3301(a)(5) of title 40, United States 
                Code.
                    (h) ``Traditional architecture'' includes classical 
                architecture, as defined herein, and also includes the 
                historic humanistic architecture such as Gothic, 
                Romanesque, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and other 
                Mediterranean styles of architecture historically 
                rooted in various regions of America.
                    (i) ``2020 dollars'' means dollars adjusted for 
                inflation using the Bureau of Economic Analysis's Gross 
                Domestic Product price deflator and using 2020 as the 
                base year.

                Sec. 4. President's Council on Improving Federal Civic 
                Architecture. (a) There is hereby established the 
                President's Council on Improving Federal Civic 
                Architecture (Council).

                    (b) The Council shall be composed of:

(i) all of the members of the Commission of Fine Arts;

(ii) the Secretary of the Commission of Fine Arts;

(iii) the Architect of the Capitol;

(iv) the Commissioner of the GSA Public Building Service;

(v) the Chief Architect of GSA;

(vi) other officers or employees of the Federal Government as the President 
may, from time to time, designate; and

(vii) up to 20 additional members appointed by the President from among 
citizens from outside the Federal Government to provide diverse 
perspectives on the matters falling under the Council's jurisdiction.

                    (c) The Council shall be chaired by a member of the 
                Commission of Fine Arts designated by the President. 
                The Chair may designate a vice-chair and may establish 
                subcommittees.
                    (d) The members of the Council shall serve without 
                compensation for their work on the Council. However, 
                members of the Council, while engaged in the work of 
                the Council, may receive travel expenses, including per 
                diem in lieu of subsistence, as authorized by law for 
                persons serving intermittently in the government 
                service, pursuant to sections 5701 through 5707 of 
                title 5, United States Code.
                    (e) To the extent permitted by law and within 
                existing appropriations, the Administrator of General 
                Services (Administrator) shall provide such funding and 
                administrative and technical support as the Council may 
                require. The Administrator shall, to the extent 
                permitted by law, direct GSA staff to provide any 
                relevant information the Council requests and may 
                detail such staff to aid the work of the Council, at 
                the request of the Council.
                    (f) Insofar as the Federal Advisory Committee Act, 
                as amended (5 U.S.C. App.), may apply to the Council, 
                any functions of the President under that Act, except 
                that of reporting to the Congress under section 6 of 
                that Act, shall be performed by the Administrator in 
                accordance with the guidelines and procedures 
                established by the Administrator.

[[Page 83743]]

                    (g) The Council shall terminate on September 30, 
                2021, unless extended by the President. Members 
                appointed under subsections (b)(vi) and (b)(vii) of 
                this section shall serve until the Council terminates 
                and shall not be removed except for inefficiency, 
                neglect of duty, or malfeasance.

                Sec. 5. Responsibilities of the Council. The Council 
                shall:

                    (a) submit a report to the Administrator, 
                recommending updates to GSA's policies and procedures 
                to incorporate the policies of section 2 of this order 
                and advance the purposes of this order. The report 
                shall explain how the recommended changes accomplish 
                these purposes. The report shall be submitted prior to 
                September 30, 2021.
                    (b) recommend to the Administrator changes to GSA 
                policies for situations in which the agency 
                participates in a design selection pursuant to the 
                Commemorative Works Act (chapter 89 of title 40, United 
                States Code), in furtherance of the purposes of this 
                order and consistent with applicable law.

                Sec. 6. Agency Actions. (a) The Administrator shall 
                adhere to the policies set forth in section 2 of this 
                order.

                    (b) In the event the Administrator proposes to 
                approve a design for a new applicable Federal public 
                building that diverges from the preferred architecture 
                set forth in subsection 2(a) of this order, including 
                Brutalist or Deconstructivist architecture or any 
                design derived from or related to these types of 
                architecture, the Administrator shall notify the 
                President through the Assistant to the President for 
                Domestic Policy not less than 30 days before GSA could 
                reject such design without incurring substantial 
                expenditures. Such notification shall set forth the 
                reasons the Administrator proposes to approve such 
                design, including:

(i) a detailed explanation of why the Administrator believes selecting such 
design is justified, with particular focus on whether such design is as 
beautiful and reflective of the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability 
of the American system of self-government as alternative designs of 
comparable cost using preferred architecture;

(ii) the total expected cost of adopting the proposed design, including 
estimated maintenance and replacement costs throughout its expected 
lifecycle; and

(iii) a description of the designs using preferred architecture seriously 
considered for such project and the total expected cost of adopting such 
designs, including estimated maintenance and replacement costs throughout 
their expected lifecycles.

                Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order 
                shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or 
the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget 
relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

                    (b) This order shall be implemented consistent with 
                applicable law and subject to the availability of 
                appropriations.

[[Page 83744]]

                    (c) This order is not intended to, and does not, 
                create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, 
                enforceable at law or in equity by any party against 
                the United States, its departments, agencies, or 
                entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any 
                other person.
                
                
                    (Presidential Sig.)

                THE WHITE HOUSE,

                    December 18, 2020.

[FR Doc. 2020-28605
Filed 12-22-20; 8:45 am]
Billing code 3295-F1-P