Before Donald Trump was ever president, I gave a lecture on the Trump organization in my ethics class covering just about every possible ethical lapse I could think of. For the White House addition, many of the same issues come up. “Virtue ethics” focus on honesty, being prudent, being temperate in your behavior. It’s a large project, so it’s hardly prudent in terms of thinking about adding to the White House. Then there’s “contract ethics”: obeying checks and balances, following processes, procedures, acting on contractual obligations. The Trump organization was legendary considering the number of times it would not fulfill contractual obligations with architects. In “duty ethics” you have an obligation to think about your actions. If everyone else did the same as you did, what would the world be like? If everyone just built whatever they felt like, whenever they felt like it, we wouldn’t have zoning laws or building codes. These are ethical issues that lapse into legal issues regarding what architects and clients are supposed to adhere to. Finally, “utilitarian ethics” is the concept of what’s the greatest good for the greatest number. The White House is also called the “People’s House.” It’s our house, not the president’s. Making a major modification to a house we all own is problematic because of this building’s historical importance. We accept presidents coming in and redecorating, but when you’re adding substantially to the building itself, that’s a different matter.

Absolutely. Architects have a responsibility not just to design a building that meets the client’s needs, but one that meets all of the review and approval processes. There are all sorts of processes that architects must go through whether the client wants to go through them or not. It’s the architect’s responsibility to make sure that they go through them. An architect who knows, for example, that the client might not want to go through them has to say: “That’s potentially a violation of the law. You have to go through these review and approval processes. It’s just part of doing buildings.” What’s really peculiar about this project is the idea that somehow Trump can just forgo those things. Like so many other things we’re seeing the Trump administration do, it’s pushing the boundary of what’s legal. Building an addition to the White House without going through review and approval processes is, as far as I’m concerned, an illegal action.

I would say yes. But the bigger question is about the loss of architecture licensure. In many jurisdictions violating the law, particularly if it’s in regard to your practice, is cause for loss of licensure. Different jurisdictions have different levels of this. For example, some require that it be related to practice. Continuing to work on a project knowing that the client might forgo review and approval processes may be a cause for loss of AIA membership and licensure. What the architect appears to have done so far is not problematic: some schematic drawings to show what’s possible, right? But what happens next? If a set of contract documents is handed over to the client that do not go through all of the required reviews and approvals, that’s potentially an illegal act.

It’s really ironic that an administration that keeps talking about wanting to root out waste, fraud, and abuse is using private financing, which is open to all sorts of fraud. Without transparency, we don’t know if the proper procedures for hiring were followed. To do a federal project there’s an RFP submission process. It might have been followed, but without transparency we don’t know. One question an architect should ask is: “Without going through a federally mandated hiring process, is my selection potentially illegal?” One might be concerned about whether the architect paid to get the commission, or do a favor. In a project with full transparency, we would have answers to these questions. We see how the Trump administration is treating lawyers: to get federal court cases they have to do favors for the Trump administration. You can’t require an architect to do pro bono work for a federal project. The fact that it’s being paid for by private money is also concerning because there could be all sorts of influence-pedaling on the part of both foreign entities as well as domestic to curry favor with the president. This is why we have processes in place to prevent this kind of behavior. 

Universities have a couple ways of thinking about conflicts. One is “conflict of commitment” and the other is “conflict of interest.” The conflict of commitment comes up when faculty members have outside obligations that prevent them from fully engaging in faculty work. That McCrery has asked for a leave of absence is probably a good thing, because it addresses the potential conflict of commitment he might encounter. In a conflict-of-interest issue, a faculty member is involved in some business-related activity that can compromise the faculty member’s integrity. It might reflect negatively on the institution itself. The danger here is that Catholic University could be swept up in this controversy and potentially has legal liability because of McCrery’s role in it. Typically, a conflict-of-interest management plan is developed with the faculty member in partnership with the institution in terms of how this potential conflict is managed. If CUA hasn’t developed a conflict-of-interest management plan, it’s leaving itself open to liability. 

Good question. This is a real learning opportunity for an architecture school. Practitioners constantly face potential conflicts. There will be clients who want to cut a corner on some requirement or not be totally honest with a code official. Architects have an obligation to tell the truth. If they sense that a client is anticipating doing something that violates a code requirement or otherwise breaks the law, the architect has an obligation to notify people in power about that. This could be a great opportunity for CUA to have a series of symposia or public conversations about this situation because there’s many aspects to it: the architect’s responsibilities vis-á-vis the client, the architect’s responsibility to a major historic building, myriad preservation issues. While I think it’s less important there could also be a conversation about aesthetics: Is this design the right thing to do architecturally, apart from legal, ethical, and practice questions? There’s a teaching opportunity here, and that’s what universities should engage in: take up controversial topics and have civil conversations about them in public fora. There’s a huge opportunity for Catholic University to take a leadership role here, engaging a broader public in what this means. It would be really unfortunate if this is just an argument about Classicism. If the profession goes down that rabbit hole, it’s going to seem as though we don’t really care about these larger ethical and legal issues.

Any architect has an obligation to tell the client about the implications of not going through required review and approval processes. Whether the client listens, of course, is another issue. In this case, he also has an obligation to be honest with his employer, Catholic University, about that client conversation, because liability could come back to the institution itself. He also has to decide whether to continue with this project if a review process is to be ignored. One of the most important acts any architect can take is to walk away from a project. There would be no addition to the White House if every architect refused to do it. Architects can simply say No, we’re not going to participate unless the required review processes are obeyed. If the president doesn’t want to do that, then no architect should be willing to do it. I’ve been studying situations where a country is run by a dictator, and how that country’s architects behaved. António de Oliveira Salazar, the dictator of Portugal until 1968, declared that all government buildings had to be classical, and he didn’t obey selection, review, and approval processes. There were a few architects who worked for Salazar, but most of them didn’t. They said, We’re not going to do government buildings. But for the few that did, when Salazar was out of power, those architects’ careers were ruined. There are many reasons to be ethical, but one of them is your reputation. Once you do unethical things and violate the law, you damage your reputation with your colleagues, with other clients, and with the community. It’s a great way to destroy your career.