Architecture is in a confused state. The profession has always been caught between art and problem-solving, but technology is fundamentally changing everything. In a time of social rage and professional listlessness, perspective is needed. Even in this age of convulsive change, none of us have ceased being human. The splintering of canonical truth in architecture has meant the loss of an aesthetic default for the profession, and in January the Trump administration jumped into that void, defining beauty as “traditional and classical.” 

Beyond politics or aesthetics, many people are desperate to spread their control into every part of our culture. Whether it’s philosophy or fashion, we move from description to prescription. However, these efforts often falter over time. In this century, there’s a prime example of the hard failure of that distinctly human endeavor: organized religion. I am not talking about God here, or any specific theological definition; the failure is not divine or human, it is institutional. By every measure, organized religion in Western civilization is losing relevance. The lesson in that failure for architects and architecture is that while religion is failing, there is no loss in faith in something beyond ourselves. Even though we’re leaving organized religion, most Americans consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious.”

The great unravelling of institutional relevance is largely because religion tried to tell us who we are and what each of us already know: what faith is. That disconnect has a direct parallel in the Trump administration’s architectural directive. The joy of discovering beauty is an essential human reality, not the result of following a recipe or a decree. 

There is obvious folly in trying to make the exquisitely subjective into an edict, no matter the intent. The constructions of “style” and “theology” don’t—can’t—have universal meanings.

There is obvious folly in trying to make the exquisitely subjective into an edict, no matter the intent. The constructions of “style” and “theology” don’t—can’t—have universal meanings. This attempt to sanction style also includes music, fine arts, and literature. But on the federal level, a separation of church and state extended into the arts. There were no laws outlawing rock music, vegan food, or abstract art. The judgments conferred were made by intellectuals and institutions, the institutional gatekeepers, not our government. Until now. 

The cautionary tale from the failing of today’s organized religion should chasten this lurch to regulate and censor architectural aesthetics. Just as aesthetic prescriptions do not define beauty, the theology imposed by organized religion does not define faith. Faith is revealed in each of us.

The old aphorism “there are no atheists in fox holes” had a generational reality after World War II. Organized religion exploded in American culture in the 1950s after a worldwide existential crisis. The result was the greatest increase in U.S. weekly church attendance since records were taken: church membership reached an all-time high, growing to almost 115 million worshippers in 1960, up from 90 million in 1950. But even the insanity of World War II did not create a sustaining religion, because our lives changed; gender, sex, and medical science redefined our lives, distinct from any relationship with God. All these realities meant that we found less comfort in the salvation defined from religious organization. Instead, we searched for it in ourselves, and in our communities. 

This is a moment where our pluralistic democratic republic is being challenged by an autocratic president, ruthlessly employing a “Unitary Executive” model of top-down authority using executive orders, such as the announcement of architectural correctness. There are precedents for presidents attempting to seize control. Richard Nixon and Franklin Roosevelt also tried to distort the Constitution, and were slapped down by the Supreme Court and Congress. But their attempts never addressed the country’s aesthetic choices. 

And yet trying to control who humans are and what they value is ultimately impossible. This latest attempt to regulate and define beauty will fail for the same reason that organized religion is failing: no school, institution, or critic defines beauty; they merely define what they themselves like. This same impulse toward control is how organized religion chose to define God. But those spiritual realities are in each of us, without learning, earning, or determining them. No institution can tell us how we feel, let alone determine what we value.

Even if the federal government dictates what is officially “beautiful,” none of us will lose what is beautiful in our lives. Beauty does not follow a bible (or an executive order). Still, like the failing attempts by organized religion of every type to control the miracle of faith, our new government is moving to define beauty. What will we do with that reality?

Featured image: Ronchamp, Le Corbusier, via Flickr.