Trump’s latest plans for a White House annex could subtly reshape the path around the South Lawn, and its resulting irregularity says a lot about the Administration’s capacity for design nuance.
The latest renderings for a new proposed building on the site of the demolished East Wing were briefly posted to the National Capital Planning Commission website on February 13, and then deleted. The plans call for a ballroom much bigger than the rest of the White House. So big, in fact, that it ruins the shape of the South Lawn driveway.
Under the proposal, a new garden would cover the site of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, which was demolished alongside the East Wing last year, while a roughly 22,000-square-foot ballroom would jut out ever so slightly into the path of the looping driveway that encircles the most famous backyard in the U.S.
The elongated oval drive would then have to be pushed in on one side to accommodate the footprint of the enlarged ballroom, like the side view of an spherical exercise ball under pressure. Rather than maintain the intentional harmony of the current drive, the proposed path turns the South Lawn into a deferential design afterthought that makes way for Trump’s dream ballroom.
In the grand scheme of Trump’s presidency—and the White House’s overall facade—a rerouted driveway is a minor thing. But the effect on this subtle element reflects the lengths his team will go to shoehorn his design ideas into reality, even if it means upsetting core design principles like balance elsewhere.
Gold-obsessed, unless it’s the golden ratio
Of course, nothing about Trump’s proposed ballroom has ever been symmetrical, nor have any of his other White House design projects been particularly subtle. He started by tearing out the Rose Garden and putting a car lot-sized flag poll on the North Lawn and then got to work tearing down portions of the White House before anyone could okay it or say no.
Trump replaced the original architect for the ballroom in December after clashes over its size. A National Park Service report last year found the plans would “disrupt the historical continuity of the White House grounds and alter the architectural integrity of the east side of the property.”
The latest proposed elevations for the ballroom, which were designed by Shalom Baranes Associates, a Washington, D.C., architectural firm, are more than twice the size of the since-demolished East Wing. The drafted design gives the White House complex the look of a male fiddler crab, which has one claw that’s bigger than the other. The planned ballroom dwarfs the West Wing in sheer footprint, which would make the overall visual balance of the White House grossly asymmetrical upon its completion.
Heightwise, however, the building appears in the renderings to rise about as tall as the Executive Mansion itself, and the proposal takes great pains to show that it won’t be visible from various vantage points in Washington, D.C., like from the Jefferson Memorial or from the U.S. Capitol steps facing northwest. The building is designed with a neoclassical facade, Corinthian columns, and a wide staircase entrance, matching the call for classical architecture Trump asked for in an executive order.
Fine arts fueled by cash, but not the arts
Construction of the ballroom will be paid for by corporate donors, raising thorny ethical questions for a president who once claimed to “drain the swamp.”
Two-thirds of known corporate donors to the ballroom have received $279 billion in government contracts over the past five years. Some donors, including Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and T-Mobile are facing federal enforcement actions, according to a review from Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group.
Earlier this month, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found that many donors failed to disclose their contributions in lobbying disclosure filings.
Trump has taken steps to remove friction or opposition to his plans to build the new building. Last October, he fired every member of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts board, the agency that would have reviewed his construction plans. Now, his 26-year-old executive assistant Chamberlain Harris, who has no background in the arts, is set to be named to commission Thursday, according to The Washington Post.