M: Let's do a little bit of positive hypothesizing. Okay, so let's say 2029 rolls around, we've got an actual grip on our country again, Donald's gone, everyone or the majority of people, like not just a plurality, but the majority of people are saying, can we please find something that maybe isn't it, that takes away the crap from before he showed up, but goes more towards the sanity that the crap allowed to flourish? Let's say all that has happened. Just heard some people talking about what if nothing actually gets built on the White House where it's been knocked down. Go online if you need to for any of this, by the way. Please help me brainstorm regarding ways to rebuild gradually something where the East Wing is, or was, that rather than being a rapid response kind of triage to try and put something there, instead becomes a longer-term ongoing project or something that... Is shaped so that if it gets delayed for one reason or another, creates something anyway. Like, my first initial thought was to shape the building process so that even if you can't put up the entirety of it, you build a level at a time, like, build the foundation with a surface that can be used for, you know, some sort of presentation or something. Something that isn't completely finished, but that if it's only able to get that far in four years, it still produces a platform, a literal platform for people to stand and say, this is how nation building works. Slow, perhaps, but definite and what is necessary. And in a way so that if it has to go that way, the next administration can build the next level and do the same thing, maybe have a balcony instead of finishing off the entire second floor. That kind of thing. That was where my mind went. I was wondering if you could come up with any other kind of incremental methods that would be interesting.
G: There’s actually a surprisingly powerful symbolic idea buried in this: a government building designed so that partial completion is still civic usefulness. That’s almost the opposite of the “announce giant thing / abandon giant thing” cycle people have gotten used to.
The East Wing especially is interesting because historically it’s already been the “less sacred, more functional” side of the complex. So you could imagine rebuilding it less like a monument and more like a visible constitutional process.
A few directions that fit your “incremental legitimacy” idea:
Instead of “build a whole building,” construct it as stacked civic terraces.
Phase 1:
Even unfinished, it becomes:
Phase 2:
Phase 3:
The symbolism:
Democracy is not hidden behind walls first. The public space comes before the power space.
Leave portions of the structure intentionally exposed for years.
Not “unfinished” in a negligent sense:
Almost like:
“This country is always under construction.”
Each administration adds:
It becomes semi-architectural timekeeping.
You could even require each administration to contribute one permanent physical improvement instead of renaming airports every four years.
Make the first completed sections educational instead of executive.
Example:
Before the “seat of power” exists, the explanation of power exists.
That inversion matters psychologically.
This one feels very American in a good way.
The foundation itself becomes a usable public structure:
If construction stalls forever? You still permanently created useful civic space.
That’s actually smart infrastructure planning:
every phase must justify its own existence independently.
This might honestly be the strongest symbolic move.
Instead of rushing walls:
Then gradually build architecture around living systems.
The message becomes:
Stability first. Foundations first. Ecology first. Permanence before grandeur.
It also avoids the optics of: “New regime immediately erects giant monument.”
A fascinating possibility: each administration only gets authority to complete one layer.
Not legally mandatory necessarily, but culturally expected.
Like:
This turns the building into:
Architecturally, it almost becomes a physical rebuttal to strongman aesthetics.
Authoritarian architecture tends to want:
Incremental civic architecture instead says:
no single administration owns the republic.
One thing most governments forget: empty space itself can symbolize restraint.
You could deliberately leave:
Not as failure. As reminder.
Like:
the country is not complete. the Constitution is not self-executing. vigilance is ongoing.
That can become corny very fast if overdone, but done subtly it could work.
Historically, this wouldn’t even be unprecedented. A lot of older monumental architecture evolved incrementally:
Modern governments often forgot this and started building like corporations:
Your idea moves closer to:
a republic expressed as a process rather than a product.
And honestly, psychologically, after periods of instability, “slow visible competence” is often more reassuring than “dramatic restoration.”
M: Are there any living, like, historical landscapers of the old school that could design something that would be acceptable to, like, the first two or three deviations worth of Americans in a way that would be iconic? What I mean is that it feels like, while back in the day they might have been avant-garde in some way, the American style was defined by people who now are thought of as being standard, you know, thoughtful landscaping with particular shapes that are beautiful if understated. My concern with leaving the question open to just, you know, landscapers, you know, or civic sculptors, or whatever you want to call them, is that the ones that would be big names today also would be either iconoclastic or willfully attempting to be so. You know, kind of like if I wanted to make a really classic style movie, even though I like his stuff, I wouldn't use Quentin Tarantino, or at least not without a good long talk with him, because he has a particular style, which some people like and some people dislike, but which definitely marks a movie as his, as opposed to a landscaper whose interest is a skillful execution rather than a skillful execution plus their own stamp on it.
G: Yes. And interestingly, the people most capable of doing it are often less famous to the general public precisely because they subordinate themselves to place, continuity, and institutional dignity instead of personal branding.
You’re basically talking about the difference between:
Or:
That second category absolutely still exists, though it’s less culturally dominant right now.
A few figures/firms/styles come to mind immediately.
One major point first, though:
The iconic “American civic landscape” style you’re describing was never actually plain. It was:
The reason it feels “neutral” now is because it won.
Like how classical film editing feels invisible because modern audiences inherited its grammar.
A good designer for this hypothetical project would probably need to intentionally disappear into the work.
The closest living equivalent to old-school civic landscape thinking might actually come from people influenced by entity["people","Piet Oudolf","Dutch garden designer"], even though he’s associated with the “New Perennial” movement.
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What makes him relevant:
Importantly: his work often feels older than it is.
That matters enormously for civic architecture.
For specifically American institutional gravitas, though, I’d honestly look less toward celebrity designers and more toward firms that specialize in:
Because those professions still preserve the “continuity over ego” mindset.
For example, firms associated with projects around:
…often operate in exactly the restrained mode you’re describing.
Not:
“How do we stun people?”
But:
“How do we make this feel inevitable?”
The other thing you may actually be searching for is not a specific designer, but a design philosophy closer to:
Meaning:
The danger, as you correctly identified, is: modern civic projects often drift toward either:
Both age badly.
Oddly enough, one of the best models might be older American university campuses.
Not the flashy new buildings. The spaces people emotionally attach to:
Those places succeed because they are:
They feel like accumulated citizenship.
You also touched on something very important:
Meaning: you want something that:
That is extremely hard.
Usually the safest path is:
Historically, the projects that survive politically tend to avoid:
Instead they use:
The Lincoln Memorial works partly because it doesn’t scream at you. The space does the work.
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Honestly, if this were real, I might recommend:
Basically: build rules that prevent any one era from “winning too hard.”
That may actually be the most democratic aesthetic possible.
M: If I demanded that you name like three landscapers who could be thought of as being artists before they were auteurs, who would you name though? I don't disagree with you on the idea of using a firm, but there also is the idea that a lot of the stuff, especially the stuff that Donald has managed to, you know, put some sort of personal graffiti on, was singular because, you know, the creation was done by someone who was more or less singular. You know, not to discount all the people that worked with them or for them or even whose work they stole credit for, but the point is that, you know, I wouldn't want someone who was trying to make a name for themselves, or someone whose name will be talked about for generations, except in the circle of professional landscapers. Like the few names that are kind of within the zeitgeist of for landscaping are because they did win that battle. That's what I was saying before is that the current American neutral is because they had a design style that was eventually settled as being quote unquote American. I'm looking for someone like that who could create something, importantly, that was kind of crisp. Like anything being done on the White House would definitely be manicured, so you'd want to shy away from someone whose creations generally lean towards, you know, letting the fauna, sorry, the flora grow, and the beauty comes from the lack of maintenance, but rather something that has the attractiveness of a, well, if we were talking about hair, a style which is going to be, you know, continuously groomed, so you work towards that rather than something that is cut for a person who, like me, generally brushes his hair once a day and that's it. But yeah, what would you give me given all of that if I demanded that you name three people?