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The writer is a professor at MIT and Politecnico di Milano, and director of Venice’s 2025 Biennale Architettura

At this year’s Biennale Architettura in Venice, we insisted: architecture must change! Yet the latest executive order from the White House — long rumoured and now dropped with the weight of a rock (or better yet, a Parthenon capital) — is not quite the change we had in mind. Trump’s order mandates that federal buildings in Washington DC default not to modernism but to classical architecture. This comes as a shock. Yet, it also demands reflection.

The previous principles for federal architecture, developed under the Kennedy administration by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, promoted no official style. Conversely, the new order declares that “classical and traditional architecture” should be the preferred choice for federal buildings — and the default in Washington. Deviations are allowed only in “exceptional” cases. Even those must still project “dignity, enterprise, vigor, [and] stability”. The US General Services Administration is instructed to prioritise classical expertise, appoint a senior adviser for architectural design, and notify the president 30 days before approving any non-preferred design. Brutalism, among other styles, is explicitly discouraged (apologies, Adrien Brody!).

We architects are indignant. The American Institute of Architects has said it is “extremely concerned”, warning that the order curtails design freedom and flattens regional expression. Federal buildings, it argues, should reflect America’s cultural richness, geographic diversity and innovative spirit. Some have drawn comparisons to the UK debate about King Charles’s fondness for vernacular forms — and, in a darker light, the state-imposed classicism of totalitarian regimes in 1930s Europe and Russia. While that parallel may be overdrawn, it is telling that, before the second world war, waves of migration from those regions helped make America a hub of architectural experimentation.

It is precisely here — in the ability to imagine new futures — that the most concerning aspect lies. In the early days of the American nation, classicism was radical and avant-garde. The rediscoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum were transforming antiquity into a playground for innovation. George Washington may have admired the Parthenon, but he wasn’t trying to replicate it — he was building something new that reflected the bold, forward-looking ethos of a young country. Today, by contrast, leaning on classical forms feels like an expression of nostalgia. A nation once defined by experimentation risks turning its architecture — and broader culture — into an echo of its past.

More than ever, architecture needs experimentation. In the face of a burning planet, we must draw on all forms of intelligence — natural, artificial and collective — to confront the challenges ahead. We need to try new materials, experiment with different ways to harness energy and test morphologies that will better sustain what the ancient Romans called civitas: the community of citizens. We need to explore new methods, engaging in a feedback loop of trial and error that mirrors the adaptive logic of nature itself.

It is the same spirit of experimentation that defined the original ethos of Silicon Valley, where everything can be tested until success or failure prevails. Out of that primordial soup came many of the most important inventions of the past 50 years. Some of them sit squarely at the intersection of design and imagination. Think of Apple. Or of the creative forces of the movie industry.

This innovative DNA has long been a beacon of American creativity. And that beacon, in turn, has fuelled America’s economic prosperity. Innovation was the engine of the nation’s cultural and material power. Whether it remains so will depend on our willingness to embrace the future, not superficially mimic the past.