Tear your eyes away from the ballroom. This courthouse is the real face of Trump-era architecture | CNN

President Donald Trump’s extravagant $400-million White House ballroom and proposed triumphal arch were always going to attract the most attention. That is somewhat the point. But this week in Tennessee, more than 500 miles away from Washington, DC, officials quietly unveiled a far more revealing illustration of the US president’s future architectural legacy. Set to open in 2030, Chattanooga’s new courthouse will be a muscular Art Deco Greek temple. More than an imposing expression of judicial power, this state building also symbolizes something of national significance: It’s the first major new design announced by America’s federal building agency since Trump’s executive order, “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again.” Its beauty is therefore now a matter of both architectural and political debate. Almost a year has passed since the president formalized his disdain for modernism, postmodernism and brutalism by mandating that major federal buildings be designed in “classical and traditional” styles. Yet, big federal projects are slow and infrequent, meaning that Chattanooga presents the first concrete (or stone, rather) evidence of how architects will respo