President Donald Trump privately advocated for painting an ornate federal office building next to the White House with a “magic paint with silicate,” CNN has learned. But ahead of a key vote on exterior changes to the sprawling Gilded Age structure, a panel of experts is warning the so-called magic paint could be incompatible with the Eisenhower Executive Office Building’s granite exterior.
Trump, who has spent significant time during his second term shaping the White House and Washington to his aesthetic taste, is proposing painting the ornate office building a bright white.
The Commission of Fine Arts, which oversees changes to federal buildings and has been stacked with Trump loyalists, on Thursday will review and weigh in on the plans for the first time.
Renderings submitted to the commission show two potential options: one with the entire structure painted white and one that paints the structure white but leaves the building’s exposed basement and sub-basement in its original granite.
The existing structure “has been largely neglected since its construction in the late 1800s,” the White House said in materials sent to the commission ahead of Thursday’s meeting, pointing to staining on the granite, abrasions and cracks from “years of poor or non-existent exterior maintenance, and general disregard.”
But a pair of preservationist groups challenging the president’s changes is warning that moving forward with the painting project is illegal — and that the paint won’t actually work on the EEOB’s surface.
After Trump floated painting the building in a Fox News interview last November, the DC Preservation League and Cultural Heritage Partners filed a lawsuit asking the US District Court for the District of Columbia to stop Trump and federal officials from making any changes to the building until they go through a standard review process.
Trump has privately claimed the “magic paint” would “strengthen the stone, keep water out, prevent staining, be easy to apply, and rarely require painting,” according to a document obtained by CNN that details the results of an expert analysis conducted by the preservationist groups.
For that analysis, the groups assembled 25 unnamed experts “who have overseen major restoration projects involving mineral silicate paints on some of the United States’ most prominent stone buildings, including the White House and the U.S. Capitol,” along with some experts who have “visited overseas manufacturing facilities of mineral silicate paint producers to receive training” in how to use the paint.
The experts concluded that “mineral silicate paints are not suited for use on granite,” explaining that the stone does not chemically bond with this type of paint. Priming the granite, they added, would incur “permanent damage,” and the paint would “not strengthen granite or improve its structural durability.” It would also fail to prevent staining, which, they said, “is likely to be much more visible on paint than on the existing granite surface.”
A slide deck prepared by Cultural Heritage Partners and shared with the Trump administration offers alternative solutions to upgrade the building, including “a conservation-grade cleaning program,” refinishing ironwork, new lighting, the installation of window film to brighten the façade, and new landscaping.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on the groups’ findings.
The preservationists’ legal challenge argues the Trump administration cannot move forward with painting without going through required the environmental and historic preservation reviews. Going around those reviews could result in irreversible damage, the groups argue.
Completed in 1888, the Eisenhower building originally housed the State, War and Navy departments, but now serves as ancillary office space for the president’s staff, including the Office of the Vice President, the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget. The building’s interior includes 553 ornately gilded rooms, bronze stair balusters, hand-painted tiles, carved wooden fixtures, stained glass rotundas and intricate cast iron.
But the building’s unusual French Second Empire style has been controversial since its inception. It took roughly 17 years to build, and by the time it was done, “the Second Empire style had fallen from favor, and (architect Alfred) Mullett’s masterpiece was perceived by capricious Victorians as only an embarrassing reminder of past whims in architectural preference,” according to the Biden White House.
Guides leading tourists around the White House complex are often heard quoting the author Mark Twain, who reportedly described it as “the ugliest building in America.”
A loosely circular driveway sweeps through the White House grounds, just below the beloved South Portico of the mansion. Its shape echoes a larger park, known as the Ellipse, which connects the president’s home to the National Mall. It also mirrors the curving pathways of nearby Lafayette Square, on the north side of the complex.
The simple symmetry of this modest roadway and the grace of the White House south grounds are no accident: They were the vision of the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., one of the original members of the Senate Park Commission, which created the monumental core of Washington as we know it, more than a century ago.
The geometry of this driveway — a small but resonant element of Olmsted’s master plan for the White House campus — will soon be erased, now that a federal judge has allowed President Donald Trump to proceed at least temporarily with construction of his 90,000-square-foot, $400 million ballroom. The ballroom, which will be larger than the original mansion, is so gargantuan that the original curving road simply won’t fit. To make room for Trump’s entertaining and fundraising space, a large notch will be clawed out of the driveway, according to drawings released by Shalom Baranes Associates, the D.C.-based architecture firm overseeing one of the most unpopular projects of the president’s second term.
A vintage aerial view of the White House grounds, looking east. (Library of Congress)
Washington has a composed geometry built up from significant details like this elliptical drive. As with the diagonal avenues that connect symbolically important circles, squares and civic landmarks, the Platonic perfection of this shape is best appreciated from the air. But it is a vital reminder of the care taken, over the past 200 years, in the design of the capital city, and the deference paid to a set of aesthetic and cultural values that came out of the Enlightenment, including a love of symmetry, repetition, iterative patterns and a fine balance between grandeur and grandiosity.
Trump is the most significant threat to the city’s architectural and design legacy since British forces burned the Capitol and White House during the War of 1812. He has already demolished the East Wing of the White House, which dates to the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He will replace it with a building that makes James Hoban’s neo-Classical executive mansion a mere appendage to a space meant to function like a hotel-convention-center-entertainment venue. He has proposed (but temporarily delayed) painting the next-door Eisenhower Executive Office Building a blinding shade of white, which preservation groups argue could irreversibly damage the stone facade.
President Donald Trump has proposed — but temporarily delayed — painting the Eisenhower Executive Office Building a blinding shade of white. (Al Drago/For The Washington Post)
He wants to build a 250-foot-tall memorial arch near the most hallowed ground in the country, Arlington National Cemetery. His “Independence Arch,” which he has said will honor himself personally, would dwarf the largest victory arches in the world, including the arch in Pyongyang, built in 1982 to honor North Korea’s murderous dictator, Kim Il Sung. Only Eero Saarinen’s slender ribbon of steel, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, would be taller. Although it would be built in a traffic circle on the Virginia side of the Potomac, the Trump arch would compete with some of the tallest buildings in Washington, including the Washington Monument and Washington National Cathedral, fundamentally altering a meticulously preserved skyline.
These proposals, the rush to realize them, the stacking of key oversight groups with Trump loyalists and flunkies and the collaboration of firms like Shalom Baranes Associates, have upended and effectively destroyed the process of design review — which has until now preserved Washington as a monumental, picturesque capital.
They would also manifest in stone, cement and steel a vision of the city fundamentally at odds with the democratic ideals of the city’s founders, the stewards of its expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the vigilance of its latter-day defenders against shabby development, cheapness and commercialization.
An 1807 rendering of the White House, including proposed North and South porticos, later built with some minor changes. (Library of Congress)
In 1806, Benjamin Latrobe, perhaps the first great architect in America, sent a letter to Congress, defending his work on the U.S. Capitol, which was then under construction. Latrobe, who also contributed to the interiors of Hoban’s White House, was a proud and difficult man, and his letter to Congress, which exercises authority over the design of the nascent city — a duty it is now shirking — was prickly and defensive. But in it, he articulated foundational principles for the aesthetics and architecture of the new republic, which recognized no kings, and no absolute authority beyond the laws and the Constitution.
“Nothing appears so clear,” he wrote, “as that a graceful and refined simplicity is the highest achievement of taste and art.” American buildings should be “chaste and simple,” and to ornament them just for the sake of surface attraction was folly.
“We find ornaments increase in proportion as art declines, or as ignorance abounds,” he maintained.
This was the common language of American architecture at the time — stately, chaste, simple, dignified — and it echoed ideas from a half-century earlier, as capitalism and representational government were together forging a new, bourgeois worldview. In Adam Smith’s 1759 “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” the Scottish philosopher and economist sometimes called the Father of Capitalism wrote that two new aesthetics were in competition as the world industrialized and broke down the old, feudal orders.
One was based on greed, power and avidity; the other on equity, justice and humility. These values would express themselves in our political systems, our economies, our ethics, our art and our architecture.
Fresh dirt can be seen piled up in early March at East Potomac Golf Links, which has become a makeshift dumping ground for soil and debris from the East Wing of the White House. (Al Drago for The Washington Post)
“Two different models, two different pictures, are held out to us, according to which we may fashion our own character and behaviour,” he wrote. “The one more gaudy and glittering in its colouring; the other more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline; the one forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye; the other, attracting the attention of scarce anybody but the most studious and careful observer.”
The elliptical drive at the White House, about to be disappeared by a gaudy new ballroom, was the exact sort of subtle detail that delighted the designers of early Washington, a pattern hidden in plain sight that would attract the attention of only “the most studious and careful observer.” The ballroom itself, which Trump has promoted as spectacular and ornate, exemplifies the aesthetic — and moral value system — that Smith found both dangerous and abhorrent.
How did we get here? How have we strayed or been misled so far from the values, ideals and aesthetics that gave Washington its current form?
Trump doesn’t have a coherent or consistent aesthetic ideal. Rather, the veteran real estate developer has reflexive responses and aesthetic tics when it comes to design — and for a president, an unprecedented willingness to assert them. Three of these habits are easy to see in his plans for Washington, mirroring his style of politics and his use of rhetoric and language. He has a primitive attraction to the big, the grand, the colossal. When he speaks, he uses superlatives reflexively, and he brings the same sensibility to architecture. And just as nature abhors a vacuum, Trump abhors anything he sees as empty. There is no value in silence, no beauty in open, uncluttered spaces. Everything must be filled, branded, made busy. Finally, he has no sense of context or formal relationships, no understanding of the hierarchies of how buildings (and institutions) relate to each other, to history, to formal plans.
The design of beautiful cities, and the design of effective governments, are predicated on “gentleman’s agreements,” voluntary deference to precedents and conventions. Trump respects none of this.
But there is a fourth deficiency in his understanding of architecture and design, which arises from and amplifies his other three failures of taste and judgment: He appears utterly uninterested in basic American values, history and symbols, and so there are no guardrails, no limits, to the damage done by his other failings.
Traffic crosses Arlington Memorial Bridge, close to where President Donald Trump wants to build a 250-foot-tall memorial arch. (Al Drago for The Washington Post)
Trump’s single-minded and unwavering preference for the biggest, his equating of size with significance, has become so familiar we have started to overlook it. But the architectural consequences for Washington will be devastating. When Stanford White — whose architecture firm McKim, Mead & White designed several branches of New York’s Public Library and the original Pennsylvania Station — drafted a memorial arch, he included in an 1892 rendering the figure of a man holding a measuring stick to offer a sense of its size. The arch, built in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park to honor the nation’s first president, rose to 77 feet, a bit taller than the ancient Roman Arch of Titus on which it was loosely modeled. But while grand and imposing, it still had a relationship to human scale.
Trump’s arch will dwarf this, and all other ancient precedents. Only the monuments erected by modern governments that rule by terror and dehumanization offer any comparable examples. And it is larger than many of those, too, dwarfing the Victory Arch in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.
It will also fundamentally alter one of the essential elements of what is known as the McMillan Plan, the Senate Park Commission’s 1902 redesign of the capital city which created the National Mall and the monumental core of Washington. The McMillan Plan forged a grand, axial vision of national healing and reconciliation that symbolically reconnected the North and the South by a bridge across the Potomac, joining a city of the dead at Arlington Cemetery to the city of the living, with the Lincoln Memorial as a hinge point. Long vistas and clear views drew the eye from the memorial to the military architect of Civil War victory, Ulysses S. Grant, at the base of the U.S. Capitol, to the temple devoted to the political architect of reunification, Lincoln, more than two miles away. The men and women who sacrificed their lives for reunification were honored by the Arlington Memorial Bridge leading to the cemetery and low-lying hills of Virginia just beyond.
That open view across the Potomac River to the hallowedburial ground was essential. A winning design in an early competition for a bridge at that crossing included two massive arches over its central piers — small compared to Trump’s arch, but large enough to impede views. The leaders of the McMillan Plan not only rejected these arches, they took particular care to keep sight lines open and the design of the shallow, low-slung bridge (by McKim, Mead & White) simple and elegant. They also stripped away a complex plan for some 40 decorative sculptures. The closer they got to the final resting place of Civil War soldiers, the more the planners insisted on dignity, sobriety and simplicity.
To understand the true scale of Trump’s ballroom, you have to get beyond the mere size of its floor plan — at 90,000 square feet, almost twice as large as the original structure’s 55,000 square feet. Rather, you need to take into account the context of the White House grounds and the surrounding federal buildings. The scale of the addition will destroy any sense of symmetry between the East and West wings and reorient the White House campus to the east, where it faces the massive Treasury Department building, a dispiriting, fortresslike phalanx of Ionic columns that natter on like someone discoursing on the infallible wisdom of free markets. Renderings of the new structure make it look like the old White House mated with Treasury, spawning a grotesque creature that has traded the livability of a domestic space for the untrammeled power of a banking colossus.
Trump’s gilded arch, ballroom and his redesign of the Oval Office with incrustations of historically anachronistic gold ornament, introduce a fussiness and busyness into a Washington aesthetic that has generally favored the chaste and simple, at least when it comes to the profile of classical buildings. His hanging of banners — in many cases featuring gigantic portraits of himself — as well as projecting images onto the blank face of the city’s most sublime and minimalist structure, the Washington Monument, suggest a need to fill in blank space, animating planes that are meant to be spare and quiet. The ballroom isn’t simply too big, it is also too busy.
Like the news cycle, architectural and urban spaces are treated as mere voids, waiting to be filled with Trumpian noise. Once filled, he owns them, at least in his own mind. Once owned, they can be monetized, and it’s likely only a matter of time until advertising is projected onto the Washington Monument and other structures.
Visitors at Arlington National Cemetery look toward the Lincoln Memorial and downtown Washington. (Al Drago for The Washington Post)
All of this has consequences on a deeper, symbolic level. The ballroom reorients the White House to suggest that it is fundamentally responsive to economic rather than civic power, confirming visually what is too often the case politically: The executive serves the financial class first and foremost.
The triumphal arch will be placed on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, effectively crowning the South as the victor in the Civil War. That too reaffirms in visual terms what is too often the case in civic life: That the values of the Confederacy, including its deeply entrenched racism and violence, remain extraordinarily powerful in American culture. The gilding of the arch echoes the tinsel applied to American history through entrenched mythologies like the Lost Cause.
There is no final price tag on all of this, beyond a few figures floated by the president, who has said that his $400 million ballroom will be financed privately — by billionaire donors and corporations maintaining contracts with the federal government in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Some of the funding for the National Garden of American Heroes will come from siphoning money out of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. We may never know how much it all costs, or who curried favor by paying for it, or what conflict-of-interest lines were crossed.
But the larger, less tangible costs can be roughly tabulated. The Commission of Fine Arts, which was created in 1910 to oversee the design of the city and execute and protect the vision of the McMillan Plan, is now a toothless organization stacked with loyalists including some with no expertise in design or architecture — among them a 26-year-old White House aide who has served as the president’s executive assistant.
Design review is dead, and with it the values of simplicity, chastity and modesty celebrated by Latrobe and Smith. Washington is now subject to design by fiat, by whim, by executive orders, whether legal or not. Trump is moving quickly to introduce noise, disorder and incoherence into the design of the capital city. It will be a lot less beautiful. And people who live here and those who visit may not know why, but they will sense that disorder and incoherence and tune it out, like just more noise.
A biker rides past Arlington Memorial Bridge on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. (Al Drago for The Washington Post)
Architecture studio AECOM has unveiled designs for a subterranean visitor screening centre as part of US president Donald Trump‘s revamp of the White House in Washington DC.
The proposed White House visitor screening centre would be built under Sherman Park
Designed by AECOM, the 33,000-square-foot (3,065-square-metre) facility would be almost entirely underground. It would be connected to a single-storey, above-ground structure built alongside East Executive Avenue.
Visitors to the White House would enter the facility via a ramp on the south of the park, before progressing through security checks underground.
The building would be almost entirely underground
A tunnel leading to escalators would connect the underground facility to the above-ground building, with visitors emerging within the White House’s security perimeter.
The above-ground building will be designed “based upon existing security booth vocabulary used throughout the campus”. It will be wrapped in columns, with limestone cladding and a sloped metal roof.
The two structures would replace temporary tents and trailers that have been used by the US Secret Service for visitor screening since 2005.
Screening would take place underground, with escalators connecting to the above-ground building
According to the planning documents, the General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument, which dominates the park, will remain in place and any trees damaged will be replaced.
“Most of the proposed structure is intentionally positioned below grade within the park’s west quadrant to reduce visual impact and to avoid infrastructure conflicts in the southeast corner of the park,” said the project summary.
“Landscape restoration, including new tree plantings, will be provided within all impacted zones to reinstate and enhance the park’s character.”
The White House intends to have the proposed screening centre operational by July 2028, with construction planned to begin later this year.
The proposals are set to be discussed by the National Capital Planning Commission at a meeting on 2 April.
The above-ground building will be wrapped in columns
Architecture studio AECOM is also part of the team designing the extension to the White House, which is set to replace the East Wing and is visible in the renders of the screening facility.
When the historic East Wing of the White House was suddenlydemolished last year to make way for President Donald Trump’s new ballroom construction, another piece of history was taken down with it.
The Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, dedicated in 1965 by first lady Lady Bird Johnson in honor of her predecessor’s stewardship of the White House, was dismantled — its iconic I.M. Pei-designed pergola put into storage; its trees sent to various nurseries for preservation.
Kennedy’s grandson would like a word with the president about that.
“President Trump has a deep obsession with my family — from the East Wing, to the Rose Garden, the Kennedy Garden, to the plane, the list goes on. But he is attacking all families each and every day with higher costs, careless war, and a deep corruption,” Jack Schlossberg told CNN.
Schlossberg, who is running for Congress as a Democrat, continued: “My grandmother believed in the people of this nation. Every single person. She wanted us to see gardens, and color, and the brightness of life. What we have now is darkness.”
More than six decades after Johnson commended the “unfailing taste of the gifted and gracious Jacqueline Kennedy,” plans for the landscaping around the new ballroom are coming into focus, unveiled in detail by landscape architect Rick Parisi during a presentation to the National Capital Planning Commission this month. And landscape architects and other historic preservation experts are taking issue with key aspects of the designs.
Ballroom-adjacent garden plans
According to the updated designs from the East Wing construction project, anew garden will sit atop the former site of the Kennedy Garden and expand south across the length of the sprawling new ballroom. It willfeature a grand staircase, a round brick patio with “original Mount Vernon brick,” large granite paver pathways, and four topiary holly trees from the former garden. A fountain from the original garden will be relocated and incorporated into the space.
The South Lawn driveway, part of a historic design incorporating ellipses, will be reconfigured, its circular shape disturbed and pinched in on one side to make way for the 89,000-square-foot ballroom.
Thatpart of the plan is also the subject of much controversy.
Parisi told the NCPC the “most striking” thing about the plan is the “opportunity to really expand on one of the most beautiful things” of the old garden with ornamental, symmetrical patterned plant beds and extensive annual and perennial plantings.
“The goal we do have is to kind of re-create some of the splendor that you had in that east garden.”
Yet the new plans offer little visual reference to the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden — a grassy lawn surrounded by hedges and seasonal florals where Barron Trump once played soccer; Commander Biden, the previous president’s German shepherd, went off-leash; and presidents and their families have sought respite and fresh air.
There are no plans to move the Kennedy Garden to another location on the White House grounds, a White House official said, though some of the trees and shrubbery will be replanted. The I.M. Pei pergola, the official added, “is being preserved and will try to be incorporated in the new landscape design,” though it has not been included in any of the plans.
Circular reasoning
During the public comment portion of the NCPC meeting, which was overwhelmingly negative, experts took aim at the asymmetry of the new driveway design.
The landscape designs of the White House have followed what’s known as the Olmsted Plan for nearly a century. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1935, the plan governed changes to White House grounds around a design organized by a series of ellipses.
Priya Jain, an architect and chair of the Heritage Conservation Committee of the Society of Architectural Historians, said the “incongruous sharp bend” of the driveway “is not only visually jarring, but strays from the historic design of softly curved pathways.”
Rob Cagnetta, a building restoration specialist and president of Heritage Restoration, said the interrupted driveway design “modifies the spatial organization of the east side of the White House grounds.”
“This is not as simply as an aesthetic concern. Architecture communicates meaning. The White House is one of the most recognizable civic buildings in the world, and its physical prominence reflects its role as the center of American executive leadership. Any new construction within this should reinforce that meaning, rather than dilute it,” Cagnetta said.
Charles Birnbaum, a landscape architect and president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, told CNN the plans were“contradictory to everything that the secretary of the Interior established.”
Birnbaum spent 15 years as coordinator of the National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative and wrote the rulebook on the matter: “Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes.”
Asked whether the design would have been approved during his tenure, he said, “It wouldn’t have been approved by the agencies. No.”
“The cultural landscape guidelines, first and foremost, are about visual and spatial relationships. So if you think about the plan that we looked at, so many of the axial visual relationships have been severed,” Birnbaum said.
He pointed to impacts to the circulation of the driveway, trees that have been torn down, and landscape features like the I.M. Pei pergola and the structure of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.
“There’s no way this would have ever been approved,” he concluded.
Birnbaum also took issue with how the asymmetric driveway departs from the Olmsted Plan.
“You’ve got to look at … the greater notion of what the ellipse represents and what it could have represented to Olmsted, when you think of these notions of balance and harmony, cycles in nature, fluidity there. This is destroying that,” he said.
The White House has been an evolving home and workplace for centuries, and there have been constant changes to the grounds, which have housed a greenhouse, a flock of sheep and jungle gyms over the years.
But unlike first lady Michelle Obama’s installation of a kitchen garden or even the changes Trump made to the Rose Garden last year, these new landscape plans are not easily reversible and do not operate within the National Park Service’s framework of standards for rehabilitation, Birnbaum said.
The Jackie Kennedy Garden: a brief history
The idea of a garden on the east side of the White House originated with President John F. Kennedy in 1962, according to landscape designer and longtime family friend Rachel “Bunny” Lambert Mellon.
Mellon, who designed the White House Rose Garden, worked closely with Jackie Kennedy on the design for the East Garden, which would be visible to visitors on tours as they walked through the window-filled East Colonnade. The women wanted a “high hedge of linden trees” for shade, “a place for the children to play,” a “lawn large enough for a small croquet court or badminton net,” and perhaps “a small plot to plant fresh herbs” for the White House chef, Mellon wrote in a 1984 article for House & Garden.
Kennedy’s suggestion of croquet inspired Mellon to think about the rosebushes in “Alice in Wonderland,” along with topiary holly trees, both incorporated into the plans.
After President Kennedy’s assassination, Lady Bird Johnson invited Mellon to the White House, where they discussed resuming the East Garden plans and dedicating it to Jackie Kennedy in honor of her stewardship.
The garden, Johnson said in her audio diary, would be “a tribute to Jacqueline Kennedy for all that she did for the White House. I think that no accolade could be enough and am all for getting it done.”
One year later, Johnson unveiled the new garden and a plaque honoring Kennedy, who was represented by her mother, Janet Lee Auchincloss.
“I can’t think anything that could have more meaning to all the people who care about Jackie than to have this lovely garden as a memory of the years that she shared with (President Kennedy) here,” she said.
Since then, the garden has been a stop on White House tours, until they were paused and ultimately rerouted when the East Wing was demolished.
The suddenness of its disappearance was a surprise to its designer, too.
“We learned about the more recent Rose Garden renovations (completed in 2025), as well as the removal of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, at the same time as the public did,” said a source familiar with Mellon’s archives.
Kennedy, Birnbaum said, “is a pillar of the modern preservation movement. And really, when you look at everything that this administration is doing, it’s saying, ‘We don’t care. We’re going to eradicate all of these histories, and we’re going to put a massive structure in a landscape that, in itself, is a symbol of democracy.’”
US organisations the American Institute of Architects and Docomomo US are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit suing US president Donald Trump over his proposed renovations for the Edward Durell Stone-designed Kennedy Center.
Eight plaintiffs submitted a lawsuit this morning in an attempt to pause proposed renovations to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC.
According to the group of plaintiffs, the lawsuit represents one of the largest legal coalitions of preservation bodies in history.
“No plaintiff can remember an instance in which so many national and regional organisations have coalesced to defend a single historic building and its grounds, reflecting both the Kennedy Center’s significance and the breadth of concern that the administration’s approach could weaken longstanding federal protections for historic sites nationwide,” said the plaintiffs.
Named as defendants in the lawsuit are president Donald Trump in his capacity as chair of the Board of Trustees of the Kennedy Centre, the Smithsonian Institute, the National Capital Planning Commission, as well as other government organisations and officials.
“It’s not about the president’s tastes. It’s about the rule of law”
The lawsuit contends that the administration must adhere to the processes in the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Protection Act before proceeding with planned renovations to the centre.
Given this, the plaintiffs demand that proper review and authorisations by congressional officials should precede any renovations. The lawsuit, if successful, would halt work on the structure until such authorisations and associated public reviews are completed.
“The Trump administration appears to believe that they can skip those federal requirements and go right to alterations,” attorney and co-founder of Cultural Heritage Partners Greg Werkheiser told Dezeen.
Cultural Heritage Partners is one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs, along with Foley Hoag and Lowell & Associates, all of which have open cases against the administration relating to other preservation issues, such as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the East Wing expansion, and the East Potomac Golf Links.
“Each of these cases is not about the politics,” said Werkheiser. “It’s not about the president’s tastes, whether good or bad. It’s about the rule of law and doing what Congress intended.”
“I’m not ripping it down,” says Trump
Last week, the board voted to close the centre for years for renovations after voting to add Trump’s name to the centre, which was built in 1971.
On 13 March, president Trump released renderings on his Truth Social account, showing a building structurally akin to the current modernist building. In the post, the president said that the steel and some of the existing marble of the building would be maintained, saying, “I’m not ripping it down.”
Werkheiser said that the case is informed by the contradiction between the assurances given by the president about the East Wing and the reality of its demolition last fall.
“The hardest lesson for America to learn is that we cannot take for granted assurances from the White House,” he said. “For the East Wing matter, the President himself told the American public that to build the ballroom, the East Wing would not be touched, and then days later, it was gone.”
“So the lesson we’ve learned is timeliness and not to take those assurances for granted,” he continued.
Almost all the plaintiffs cited the historical significance of the building and the need for care and procedure in issues of its renovation.
“Architects have the core responsibility of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public and that includes the integrity of our nation’s civic and cultural landmarks,” said AIA president Illya Azaroff.
“The Kennedy Center is a public asset that must be shaped through transparency, expertise, and the communities it serves.”
In a statement to Dezeen, a White House spokesperson said that the administration is looking forward to “ultimate victory” in the dispute.
“President Trump is committed to making the Trump-Kennedy Center the finest performing arts facility in the world. We look forward to ultimate victory on the issue,” said the White House spokesperson.
Nordic Office of Architecture with Haptic Architects, Scenario, and I-d. Interiørarkitektur & Design completes the first phase of Norway’s New Government Quarter in Oslo, on the site of the July 22nd, 2011, terrorist attacks, reopening the political center of the country as a reconfigured civic landscape. The masterplanconsolidates nearly all Norwegian ministries into a compact campus for around 4,100 employees. Framed as a ‘design for democracy,’ the project brings government functions together while restoring pedestrian routes, public plazas, and daily urban life to an area long defined by trauma and security barriers.
The masterplan arranges five new and two restored buildings as a ring of ministries around interconnected public spaces, stitching the quarter back into Oslo’s historic center. Phase 1 includes the restored Høyblokken alongside the new A- and D-blocks, forming what the architects describe as a public ‘front line’ facing the city. The retained G-block and future phases complete a walkable campus that balances visibility and discretion. ‘The New Government Quarter is now part of Oslo’s everyday life rather than an isolated enclave,’says Knut Hovland, Partner and Head of Design at Nordic Office of Architecture.
New Government Quarter phase one opens to the public
Previously, the former Y-block and surrounding road infrastructure had created a car-centric enclave. In its place, the Norway-, Denmark- and Iceland-based architectslink Hammersborg, the city center, and the fjord through reopened streets, refreshed plazas at Johan Nygaardsvolds plass and Einar Gerhardsens plass, and new pedestrian and cycling connections. A future public park, Regjeringsparken, designed with SLA and Bjørbekk & Lindheim, will introduce open lawns, native planting, and clear sightlines that maintain both accessibility and security.
At the center of Phase 1 stands the A-block and its 51-meter-high Pyramid Hall, a timber-lined atrium that functions as both lobby and symbolic heart. The space is animated by Outi Pieski’s AAhkA (Mother Earth), a vertically rising artwork that addresses Sámi history and indigenous futurism. Generous glazing, visible circulation, and open ground floors position the building as a permeable threshold between state and citizen. ‘From day one, the question was how to create a place that symbolizes Norwegian democracy and identity. We were asked to design a secure government district, but also a place where people feel welcome to walk, sit, protest and remember – a government quarter that belongs to the whole of Norway,’reflects Gudmund Stokke, founding partner and head of design at Nordic Office of Architecture.
Bridges and shared social zones form what the team calls the Collaboration District, connecting ministries at the first-floor level and encouraging cross-departmental exchange. Internally, modular floor plates and flexible office layouts are designed to adapt to evolving political structures and digital work practices over decades.
the first phase of Norway’s New Government Quarter in Oslo is completed
embedding security in landscape and long-term sustainability
The architecture responds directly to the post-2011 dilemma of reconciling security with public trust. Protective measures are integrated into landscape design, building envelopes, and controlled vehicle access. Clear sightlines, active ground levels, cafés, and accessible gardens invite everyday use.
Material choices root the complex in Norwegian geology and craft traditions. Larvikite stone clads facades and public surfaces, selected for durability and long-term patina. Locally sourced timber from Nordmarka brings warmth to interiors, while boatbuilders Risør Båtbyggeri, in collaboration with Biko, contributed to the double-curved wooden surfaces and sculpted stair elements. The buildings are designed to meet BREEAM-NOR Excellent standards, incorporating seawater-based heating and cooling, low-carbon concrete, and detailed envelopes to reduce operational energy demand. Approximately 20 percent of the 15,800 furniture items in Phase 1 are reused from previous government buildings, aligning circularity with continuity.
reopening the political center of the country as a reconfigured civic landscape
art as memory and continuity
Curated and produced by KORO, the quarter hosts Norway’s largest public art program, comprising around 300 new and re-sited works. Artworks bearing visible traces of the 2011 attack have been conserved and relocated, forming a distributed memorial embedded in daily use.
The collection includes Pablo Picasso’s sandblasted concrete mural. The Fishermen, relocated from the former Y-block to the southwest facade of the A-block; Do Ho Suh’s Grass Roots Square, a field of approximately 50,000 small bronze figures supporting stone slabs at Einar Gerhardsen’s plass; and Jumana Manna’s 800-square-meter mosaic Sebastia at Johan Nygaardsvolds plass, composed of stone offcuts donated by municipalities across Norway, turning the plaza into a literal ‘city floor.’ The project also incorporates the public 22 July Centre, dedicated to the events of July 22nd, 2011, and anticipates the unveiling of the new National 22 July Memorial in summer 2026, marking 15 years since the attacks.
the masterplan consolidates nearly all Norwegian ministries into a compact campus for around 4,100 employees
a national commission
Commissioned by the Ministry of Digitalisation and Public Administration with Statsbygg as developer, the project was awarded in 2017 to the Team Urbis consortium led by Nordic Office of Architecture. Phase 1 was delivered on time and within the parliamentary budget frame of NOK 24.7 billion and is expected to be completed for more than NOK 2 billion under this ceiling.
‘The New Government Quarter is a once-in-a-generation commission that demonstrates how architecture, landscape, engineering and art can come together on one of the most sensitive sites in Norway,’says Eskild Andersen, CEO and Partner at Nordic Office of Architecture. ‘It transforms a closed government district into an open civic heart for Oslo and the country, where everyday government and everyday life converge.’ With Phase 2 set to begin in 2026 and complete by 2030, the quarter remains a long-term national project.
framed as a ‘design for democracy’
the project brings government functions together
the space is animated by Outi Pieski’s AAhkA (Mother Earth)
Phase 1 includes the restored Høyblokken alongside the new A- and D-blocks
a public ‘front line’ facing the city
the masterplan arranges five new and two restored buildings as a ring of ministries
the architecture responds directly to the post-2011 dilemma of reconciling security with public trust
clear sightlines, active ground levels, cafés, and accessible gardens invite everyday use
1/5
historic terrazzo column and vertical timber paneling highlight material continuity across old and new
a sculpted timber staircase spirals through the atrium
a large-scale mural animates the collaboration district
the prime minister’s meeting room combines stone, timber ceilings, and curated norwegian design pieces
For me, the answer is my mother, Emellen Mitchell Estes. Long before I was designing urban spaces or serving as Mayor, she was the one who gave me the “zoning permits” to build imaginary cities in our backyard in Atlanta.
An educator at heart, Emellen was a graduate of two iconic HBCUs—Morris Brown College and Atlanta University, now known as Clark-Atlanta University. She served as a teacher and Principal in the Atlanta Public Schools during the segregated 50s, 60s, and 70s. Despite the challenges of the era, she and my father fostered my passion for art, architecture, and the performing arts.
A tribute to Emellen Mitchell Estes, a dedicated educator and mother, whose influence shaped a legacy in architecture and education.
She didn’t just teach me how to build; she taught me who I was. She shared our rich ancestral history and kept me grounded in faith at the historic Big Bethel AME Church on Auburn Avenue.
I am the architectural designer, urban planner, and graphic & web designer I am today because she believed in the blueprints of my imagination.
UPDATE: The National Capital Planning Commission has postponed its final vote on the White House East Wing Modernization Project to April 2, 2026, after receiving over 32,000 written comments and having more than 100 people registered to testify during the public hearing on March 5, 2026.
Opposition to Donald Trump’s White House expansion plans has focused on the building itself but the implications for the grounds are just as egregious, writes Charles A Birnbaum.
The debate about the proposed White House ballroom has prompted questions about stewardship of the nation’s most important cultural patrimony. But it also illustrates how landscape architecture has been ignored, and how principled regulatory processes have been twisted into a performative auto-da-fé.
On October 15, 2025, as reported in The New York Times, president Donald Trump told a group of supporters: “We started with a much smaller building, and then I realized, we have the land”.
Laws and guidelines regarding the grounds are being flouted and ignored
The “land” to which the president refers is the White House Grounds, a site that ranks among the nation’s most historically significant designed landscapes. It is also listed both in the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark (NHL).
However, laws and guidelines regarding the grounds are being flouted and ignored, and regulatory agencies are being stacked with loyalists who have demonstrated little interest, if any, in understanding the significance of the cherished and beloved landmark they’re affecting.
For more than a century, one of the greatest influences on the White House Grounds has been the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr (son of the designer of US Capitol Grounds and New York City’s Central Park). He was the key contributing author to the 1916 Organic Act, which created the National Park Service (NPS), the federal agency that oversees the grounds.
In the act, Olmsted wrote the so-called “non-impairment” standard, where the NPS must “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein, and… leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” The Organic Act is the foundation upon which nearly all NPS management decisions are based.
The report’s opening paragraph is both contextualizing and cautionary: “The White House Grounds… are characterized by many long-established landscape qualities of great dignity and appropriateness. It is of the utmost importance to perpetuate these qualities; and, in so far as they are affected by changes which are necessary or desirable for other reasons, to strengthen and perfect them instead of obscuring or weakening them.”
Landscape provides the essential overarching structure for the building
Olmsted noted that good management necessitates “a thorough study of the landscape history of the grounds,” and, as observed in the 2020 historical study The Olmsteds and The National Park Service, he specifically cited “the need for planning in advance of building expansion”.
Neither seems to be a priority at present.
There is one more important level of context. Since NPS is part of the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Secretary of the Interior is responsible for establishing professional standards and providing advice on the preservation of cultural resources listed in the National Register of Historic Places; that includes the White House Grounds.
Those standards can be found in the Secretary of the Interior’s “Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes”. They were created following an important policy shift at DOI from a “building” focus to one that was more holistic at a “property” scale. Yet, these guidelines have been largely ignored.
Importantly, the primary concern in addressing a historically significant cultural landscape is not solely its materiality, which is the focus when dealing with historic building architecture. It is first and foremost the property’s visual and spatial organization and relationships.
At the property scale, the landscape not only serves as the stage, but it also provides the essential overarching structure for the building contained therein, like the placement of walls or windows of a structure.
Current discussions about the ballroom project are almost exclusively architecture- and artifact-focused
As the author of the above-mentioned “guidelines” during my 15-year tenure as coordinator of the Historic Landscape Initiative at NPS from 1992 to 2007, it is my observation that the proposed ballroom, in its current iteration, is wholly incompatible with the site, and fundamentally violative of the Organic Act of 1916 and the Olmsted Plan of 1935, which have guided decision-making for decades.
Unfortunately, current discussions about the ballroom project are almost exclusively architecture- and artifact-focused.
Some members of Congress have raised policy and procedural concerns. In an October 24 2025 letter, representative Mike Turner, founder and co-chair of the Congressional Historic Preservation Caucus, asked “what efforts were undertaken by the… White House to identify, document and preserve historically significant artifacts, fixtures, or architectural components in the East Wing prior to demolition?”
And an October 30 2025 letter signed by 60 members cites the White House Preservation Act of 1961, which “requires the preservation of any ‘historic’ or ‘artistic’ property, including furniture, fixtures, and decorative objects, for the American public”.
Neither the letters nor the White House Preservation Act address the significant NHL-designated landscape, its historic visual and spatial attributes, “witness trees”, et cetera.
The two reviewing agencies, the US Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) and the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) are now stacked with loyalists. They are largely bereft of the knowledge, expertise, and leadership needed to make consequential and informed decisions about the White House Grounds.
This administration has shown that it will do as it pleases
The CFA unanimously approved the project on 19 February, despite receiving a record number of public comments (some 2,000), more than 99 per cent of which were opposed, and the NCPC is expected to follow suit on 5 March, despite polling that shows the public objects to the project by a margin of two to one and tens of thousands of comments.
Fortunately, the congressionally chartered National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private non-profit, filed suit on 12 December 2025 to halt construction. On 26 February, judge Richard Leon ruled against the trust on procedural grounds, but he noted that if the trust “is inclined to amend its complaint”, which the trust has announced plans to do, “the court will expeditiously consider it and, if viable, address the merits of the novel and weighty issues presented”.
Even if the court rules in the trust’s favor, further appeals are expected. What will happen in the interim? This administration has shown that it will do as it pleases – the law and public opinion be damned.
Charles A Birnbaum is the founding president and CEO of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a Washington, DC-based education and advocacy non-profit which awards the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.
The photo is courtesy of the US National Archives.
The Bradfield Development Authority has revealed the next major milestone in the creation of Australia’s first new city in more than a century, unveiling the master plan and concept design for Bradfield City’s First Land Release, known as Superlot 1.
by Clémence Carayol
Designed by Hassell and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), in collaboration with cultural design partners Djinjama and COLA Studio, the ambitious reference design establishes a new benchmark for sustainable, inclusive and future-focused urban development.
The precinct will serve as the physical and symbolic gateway to Bradfield City, setting the tone for its evolution as Western Sydney’s new urban heart.
“We set out to create a precinct where nature and urban life are intertwined, ensuring Bradfield City feels welcoming, sustainable and uniquely of its place,” says Kevin Lloyd, Principal, Hassell.
Delivered by the NSW Government alongside developer and investor Plenary, the First Land Release is envisioned as a vibrant, 24/7 mixed-use precinct that will catalyse investment, innovation and community life.
More than 1,400 new homes will be delivered, including 10 per cent dedicated to affordable housing, alongside commercial, retail and community spaces.
The precinct is strategically positioned within minutes of the new Metro station and the expansive Central Park, reinforcing Bradfield City’s role as a highly connected metropolitan centre.
At the core of the master plan is an ambition to create a place where transport connectivity, urban density and deep respect for Country coexist.
This vision is expressed through the ‘Green Loop’, a 15-metre-wide landscape spine that weaves Moore Gully’s natural systems through the built environment. Shaped by extensive First Nations engagement and informed by Country through cultural design partner Djinjama, the landscape and architecture feel intrinsically connected to place from the outset.
Anchoring the Green Loop is the Community Gathering Space, an intergenerational hub housed within a striking timber pavilion. Its woven canopy of interlocking timber reflects the Aboriginal principle of “Enoughness”, taking only what is needed, offering a sustainable prototype for learning, gathering and connection that exists in harmony with the loop’s water and biodiversity systems.
The precinct’s design prioritises permeability and movement. A fine-grained network of active streets and mid-block pathways promotes walkability, safety and vibrant street life. At ground level, public spaces, retail, lobbies and shared amenities activate street frontages, encouraging daily interaction and participation in community life.
As an economic and cultural anchor for the new city, the First Land Release will integrate a major education campus, a hotel and commercial office spaces, strategically clustered near the Metro to foster a thriving innovation hub.
A diverse housing mix — including student accommodation, affordable housing and market-rate apartments — ensures a truly intergenerational community from day one.
Bradfield City’s First Land Release represents a confident new model for city-making: one that celebrates Country, champions sustainability and innovation, and places community at its core, setting a powerful precedent for Sydney’s newest city.
“To design a new city is both a rare opportunity and a profound responsibility. Bradfield City is a chance to shape a vision with Country and community, embedding resilience, sustainability, and innovation into every layer of the city,” says Michael Powell, Senior Associate Principal, SOM.
Images: Bradfield City First Land Release / supplied
Members of the advisory council Commission of Fine Arts unanimously voted to approve designs for the White House ballroom expansion, releasing new renderings of the controversial project.
With this unanimous vote, the project will move forward for further discussion on 5 March by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), which “adopts, approves, or provides advice” on projects in the greater Washington DC area.
The CFA vote advances the project towards a 5 March meeting
The East Wing Modernization project includes replacing the former East Wing of the White House with a two-storey building and an expanded colonnade that would attach it to the Executive Residence, which sits at the centre of the White House complex.
The second storey will contain a 22,000 square foot ballroom (2,043 square metres), which was commissioned by President Trump as a space to host visiting dignitaries.
The CFA is made up of seven members appointed by the US president.
Established in 1910, the CFA reviews “matters of design and aesthetics” within the Washington DC area, and acts as an advisory board, but does not have approval in terms of the actual realisation of the White House expansion.
A large colonnade lines one side of the ballroom design
As a whole, the White House is largely exempt from the National Historic Preservation Act, which mandates review for projects on federal buildings, allowing for Trump’s expedited approval process for the project.
Drawings of the East Wing were effectively leaked recently by the NCPC ahead of the 5 March meeting. Although roughly similar, the PDF presented today included more detailed sections and floor plans than seen before.
all images by 
the first phase of Norway’s New Government Quarter in Oslo is completed
reopening the political center of the country as a reconfigured civic landscape
the masterplan consolidates nearly all Norwegian ministries into a compact campus for around 4,100 employees
framed as a ‘design for democracy’
the project brings government functions together
the space is animated by Outi Pieski’s AAhkA (Mother Earth)
Phase 1 includes the restored Høyblokken alongside the new A- and D-blocks
a public ‘front line’ facing the city
the masterplan arranges five new and two restored buildings as a ring of ministries
the architecture responds directly to the post-2011 dilemma of reconciling security with public trust
clear sightlines, active ground levels, cafés, and accessible gardens invite everyday use
