Hours after Trumps inauguration, he was already thinking about architecture.It was one subject among many for an initial flurry of executive orders. Now the General Services Administration (GSA) has sixty days to deliver recommendations to President Donald Trump for promoting beautiful federal civic architecture.The executive order (EO) from January 20 was addressed to Stephen Ehikian, GSAs new administrator. Ehikian has taken the reigns from Robin Carnahan, the Biden administrations GSA administrator, and has since given top level GSA jobs to tech and finance leaders. The EO was one of dozens the Trump administration rolled out after being sworn in this weekend, just after Elon Musk gave what many called a Nazi salute. Other EOs had to do with mass deportations, anti-DEI and anti-trans programs, opening up oil rigs in Alaska, issuing pardons and sentence commutations for January 6 rioters, and other America First initiatives.Additional EOs will have global impact: Trump will have the U.S. leave the World Health Organization and has again pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement. He did this during his first presidency, only to have President Biden re-join the agreement as one of his first acts when he took office in 2021.Likewise, Biden revoked the original EO from 2020 that mandated federal buildings be built in the neoclassical style, a mandate that Trump has in turn reversed.Regional, Traditional, and ClassicalIn his EO related to architecture, Trump requested recommendations that would advance the policy that Federal public buildings [] be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.Such recommendations shall consider appropriate revisions to the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture and procedures for incorporating community input into Federal building design selections, the EO continued. The EO also had language about buildings proposed before the 60-day deadline in late March.POTUS said in the EO that if GSA proposes to approve a design for a new federal public building before the deadline, Ehikian will have to notify Trump personally not less than 30 days before the [GSA] could reject such design without incurring substantial expenditures. Such notification shall set forth the reasons the Administrator proposes to approve such design, the EO concluded.The Washington, D.C. Metro was designed in the Brutalist style by Chicago architect Harry Weese. (Aidan Lang/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0)The EO came two days after the National Civic Art Societys Justin Shubow appeared on CBS Sunday Morning and discussed what to do with the blight of Brutalist buildings, especially in Washington, D.C.National Building Museum executive director Aileen Fuchs was also interviewed for the segment and defended federal buildings realized in the Brutalist style. Last year, the institution hostedCapital Brutalism, an exhibition about the citys prevalent and controversial architectural style.Beyond this architectural task, under Ehikians tutelage the GSA has pledged to crush the Green New Deal and DEI programs within the GSA. We will remove extremist Green New Deal and ESG [environmental, social and governance] requirements from federal building construction, leasing and procurement to prioritize economic efficiency over ideological mandates, Ehikian toldFederal News Network.In the weeks leading up to Trumps January 20 inauguration, many, including Chicago Tribune columnist Ed Keegan, wondered if he would revive his EO from 2020 which mandated all new federal buildings be designed in the neoclassical style.The EO from 2020 was met with praise by the National Civic Art Society but widely condemned by many architects; architectural anthropologist Michal Murawski said the EO would result in Washington, D.C. looking like Yuri Luzhkov-era 1990s Moscow with all of its faux bells and whistles.There was no mention of classical architecture in the Heritage Foundations Project 2025, which many said would be Trumps playbook after taking office; although Project 2025 did propose creating a more conservative EPA, shrinking HUD, and hacking away at public transit infrastructure investment, among other things.This is all to say that, with this new EO, stylistic mandates are indeed back on the table.