No one could imagine Donald Trump's Presidency, it was unthinkable but Donald Trump, the King of Real Estate sector, is now the president-elect of the United States. While many civil Americans reacting the election results, architects and urban planners are commenting and send their robust critics on the Presidency of Trump by insisting that what does Trump's Presidency mean for architects and our American cities now?

A few days ago, The American Institute of Architects (AIA) released a statement saying that the AIA will work closely with Donald Trump to strengthen the nation’s aging infrastructure. The AIA has widely been criticised by many architects and the public. Upon Robert Ivy's statement, Chief Executive Officer, AIA, Annelise Pitts, Assoc. AIA, Rosa Sheng, AIA, Lilian Asperin, AIA, Saskia Dennis-van Dijl and Julia V. Mandell, AIA have issued an open letter to Robert Ivy reminding the core values of AIA through the Equity Alliance's website. 

In response to these public debates, American architect and urbanist, founder of Terreform, Michael Sorkin, has released a new statement about Trump's Presidency and says that ''Trump presidency represents a clear and present danger to many values that are fundamental to both our nation and our profession.''

In a special letter sent to World Architecture Community, Michael Sorkin mentions his worrisome concerns on Trump's many social dislocations and uncertainties including 'racial discrimination, tenant harassment, stiffing creditors (including architects), evasive bankruptcies, predilection for projects of low social value – such as casinos.'

''We do not welcome Donald Trump to the White House and will revile and oppose him until he can conclusively demonstrate that the hideous pronouncements and proposals of his campaign have demonstrably been set aside and in favor of positions and actions that genuinely seek to serve our national cause and purpose – to build a better America rooted in the principles of justice, equity, and human dignity,'' adds Michael Sorkin.

Here is the entire statement from Michael Sorkin: 

Architecture Against Trump

''We are dismayed at the temperate, agreeable, indeed feckless, statement that the director of the AIA has issued on behalf of – although clearly without any consultation with - its membership on the election of Donald Trump. While his words appear anodyne and reflect the judicious position and celebration of America’s history of peaceful transitions of power articulated by both President Obama and Hillary Clinton, they are an embarrassment to those of us who feel that the Trump presidency represents a clear and present danger to many values that are fundamental to both our nation and our profession.

Architects and other designers working in the built environment have special insight into both the mentality and the behavior of Donald Trump, who has gained his fortune as a builder, developer, and brander of architecture. While the work that bears his name is of decidedly mixed formal quality, the circumstances surrounding both its social and physical construction are troublesome to say the least. Trump’s well-documented history racial discrimination, tenant harassment, stiffing creditors (including architects), evasive bankruptcies, predilection for projects of low social value – such as casinos – and his calculated evasion of the taxes that might support our common realm are of a piece with his larger nativist, sexist, and racist political project. We do not welcome Donald Trump to the White House and will revile and oppose him until he can conclusively demonstrate that the hideous pronouncements and proposals of his campaign have demonstrably been set aside and in favor of positions and actions that genuinely seek to serve our national cause and purpose – to build a better America rooted in the principles of justice, equity, and human dignity.

Given our commitment to the physical environment, we must evaluate President-elect Trump’s actions in the areas outline below. These will reveal not only his true character and mettle but ours as well; both as a basis for shaping our ability to countenance his government and also to set standards for our resistance to the mentality of the highest bidder and lowest ethical common denominator.

1. Decent affordable housing for all citizens as a matter of right. Trump’s presidency is in some ways an after-effect of the great recession brought on – in large part – by the kind of predatory financial practices of which he is himself an emblem. The mountain of mortgage debt and its “securitization” via high-risk financial junk collapsed, robbing millions of their homes and savings. We bailed out the banks but not the people. We now need robust means – including dramatic subsidy – to create genuine residential security for all Americans.

2. The earth’s environment is inarguably in a dire state and this imperils us all. The stunning and unsupportable ignorance that Trump and the cabal of climate-change deniers are likely to foist on us is alone grounds for radical measures to resist and impeach a Trump presidency. We face an emergency and unless truly radical steps are taken to move us towards a post- carbon economy, to conserve energy, to use our precious planetary resources with the great care and most considered stewardship they demand, we will rise up against any government bent of leading down the path to global suicide. 

3. Of course, we strongly support investment in our national physical infrastructure. This means jobs, an economic shot in the arm, increased competitiveness, and much else. But such an investment begs the question: “in what?” When Barack Obama took over the reins of government and applied himself to the task of digging us out of the hole Republican greed had put us in, the phrase “shovel-ready” became part of our vocabulary. Unfortunately, too much of what was ready to go was based on systems and standards that were already obsolete. We certainly need to repair lots of roadways and bridges and, especially, to repair crumbling sewer and water systems. But is the best we can do? We also need to think about the infrastructures of the future, those that will reduce our reliance on the automobile and conduce sprawl and other increasingly unsustainable urban forms. How much of that half trillion Trump proposes to spend will go to public transit? How much to reconfiguring our imperiled coastlines? How much to assuring that our insane production and disposal of waste enters a circular system of conservation and re-use? And how much will be invested in fair wages, good work, and environmentally just material extraction, production, and use? All of this is the ethical purview of the architect. Has Trump given ten minutes thought to a future that doesn’t conform to the worst practices of today? How much of his infrastructural investment will be spent on insane border fortifications, prisons for illegal “aliens” and runways for fleets of atomic bombers?

4. In order to secure a sustainable future, we need enormous investment in research and education. This will not simply be to invent the new technologies to enable a more sustainable future – including that gamut that surrounds building and fabrication - but to create generations of citizens who know the value of living in harmony with the planet’s rhythms and resources and who have had the practices of sharing and generosity imbued in them. Can this ultimate avatar of selfishness and hyper-consumption even contemplate what such an education might entail? Can he shift the focus of his allies from demonizing public education and frothing about who goes to what bathroom in order to help bring up our children with hearts full of respect for the earth and for the science that describes it?

5. Finally, can this tribune of wealth and disdain for the other – for people of color, the handicapped, Muslims, women, Hispanics - ever understand that many of us entered the design professions because we so clearly saw the capacity of our practices to influence and structure the way in which the world’s resources are distributed and deployed? Trump’s newly “presidential” demeanor – his claims that he seeks to “bring us together” – will continue to ring completely false until he dedicates himself to seeking genuine equity not just for Americans but for all of those who struggle to live good lives on our crowded and troubled planet.

We must carry on the struggle for a just and sustainable environment with redoubled strength, opposing the reactionary policies that so gravely threaten our most fundamental values. Trump’s agenda – and that of his allies – will only accelerate the privatization and erosion of our public realm in both its social and physical forms and practices. We call upon the AIA to stand up for something beyond a place at the table where Trump’s cannibal feast will be served! Let us not be complicit in building Trump’s wall but band together to take it down!''

Michael Sorkin

Michael Sorkin and Michael Murphy will be at conversation on Politics, Space, and Justice in Architecture on November 18, 2016 at the AIA Center in New York as part of the AIANY Architectural Dialogues Committee's Cocktails and Conversations. 

Following a presentation by Murphy on spaces of justice and how architecture can heal, Murphy and Sorkin will discuss the threat of depoliticizing architecture, particularly admist the evolving political context.

Top image: Image courtesy of LafargeHolcim Foundation 

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