When it comes to Dulles airport, Trump might actually have a point
I found myself in the unusual position of nodding along in enthusiastic agreement with the aesthetic tastes of US president Donald Trump last week. This was unusual. We all have our own personal style but Trump’s insistence on deploying maximum opulence to his interiors does not chime with my more reserved British design sensibilities.
Under Trump, the Oval Office has been transformed from an elegant space into an Aladdin’s cave: golden eagles and urns have been unearthed from the White House collection; golden cherubs were shipped in from Mar-a-Lago; the TV remote control has been wrapped in gilt – you get the picture.
Trump’s architectural tastes veer in a similar direction. He has issued an executive order stating that classical architecture serve as the preferred architectural style for all applicable federal public buildings, while criticising the “exposed poured concrete” of brutalist and modernist buildings. So it was strange to hear Trump praising the visionary Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and his mid-century modern masterpiece that is Washington’s Dulles International Airport.
Its sweeping concrete roof, which evokes the wing of a plane or perhaps the elegance of flight, hovers over the large glass frontage held up by slanted concrete pillars. There is no hint of the Greek or Roman classical styles that Trump admires. But speaking in a cabinet meeting earlier this month, he called Saarinen “one of the greatest architects in the world”. Though he went on to say that while Dulles was a “great building”, it was “a bad airport” and promised to rebuild it.
Again, he was right. While the main terminal is a triumph, everything else at Dulles is a disaster. Behind the airy and inviting main terminal are two separate concourse buildings. They are long and claustrophobic – and no matter how many times you traipse up and down them, it is impossible to find anything worth eating or buying. There is no stylistic continuity between any of the gates, just different levels of confusion, discomfort and overcrowding.
Shuttling people between these terminals is one of Saarinen’s less-enduring designs: the mobile lounge, a lumbering, 35-tonne, bus-like vehicle that raises and lowers to let passengers on and off. When Dulles opened in 1962, these mobile lounges might have seemed like the cutting edge of airport design. Today, they are hot, smelly, overcrowded cattle wagons that I dread boarding. One crashed in November, with 18 people left needing hospital treatment.
But what does Trump have in mind when he promises an “amazing plan” to Make Dulles Great Again? The airport is already being overhauled, with a new concourse opening next year. Since 2010, a rail transit operates between most of the terminals and this will expand.
Maybe Trump wants to put his stylistic stamp on Dulles. Given his executive order suggests that classical architecture is the way forward, can we expect some Greco-Roman flourishes? Perhaps some colonnades slapped in front of the windows and a portico or two over the entrance doors? Trump loves marble – he recently decked out the White House’s Lincoln Bathroom in it – so maybe the toilets will take a more luxurious turn. The tips of the iconic sloping roof would be an ideal place to perch some golden birds or maybe even a floating cherub, if Mar-a-Lago can spare any more.
A call for proposals went out on 2 December, so time will tell whether Trump has a Midas touch with airports. As for me, I’d just be happy with a decent café.
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is a journalist based in Washington. Further reading? Here we take a look at the Trump family’s plans for a redevelopment in Belgrade.
