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| Rendering of proposed boarder wall cnn.com |
It is Wednesday and time for the Blogger Candidate Forum. Today we are going to look at what kind of building spree President-elect Donald Trump. Over the course of the campaign, PEOTUS Trump began his campaign with the announcement that he plans to build a wall along southern United States boarder and getting Mexico to pay for it. Not just any wall, ...a great wall. He made this pronouncement in the lobby of the Trump epicenter, the gilded Breccia Prenice marble. Bragging to the assembled press,
Nobody builds walls better than me, believe me. And I'll build them very inexpensively.
The Guardian's Oliver Wainwright recently speculated on what we can expect from the developer-turned-President of The United States in his article "Trumpitecture: what we can expect from the billionaire cowboy builder." Will we see more gilt and marble buildings? Shall we have a look.
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| Trump Tower from street level New York City, New York en.wikipedia.org |
During the course of the campaign, the American public was treated to blustery policy announcements with little detail. Said wall grew in height along with his swelling campaign-from 30 to 55 feet; the budget also ballooned from $8 to $12 billion. Independent budget estimates put the cost of the wall closer to $25 billion and require three times the amount of concrete used in Hoover Dam. Not that is an issue for PEOTUS, who insisted that his wall would have
beautiful everything...just perfect. Maybe someday they'll call it the Trump Wall. So I have to make sure it's beautiful, right?
Since his election victory, his plans for a beautiful wall have been scaled back to a fence. Mr. Wainwright opines, "If it's anything like the other edifices that bear his name, in 20ft high bronze letters, beauty might be be stretching it..." The shiny golden surfaces that telegraph luxury masks a dubious product.
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| The lobby of Trump Tower New York City, New York trumptowerny.com |
don't quite register as architecture...[but instead stand as] signs of money, status, power [like the] diamonds, furs, yachts and other token of the deluxe life enjoyed in Marbella.
The thing that Mr. Muschamp found objectionable about PEOTUS's tastes was not the
desire for attention, for the best, the most, the tallest, the most eye-catching [but] his failure to realise these desires creatively in the architectural medium.
For the man who carried on about building big beautiful structures, the thing has turned as yuge as he promised. Let us have a look at some examples.
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| The Commodore Hotel New York City, New York collections.mcny.org |
Mr. Wainwright writes, "Just like his policies, Trump's real estate projects are often characterized by bold claims that don't quite stand up-beginning with their height." He points out that PEOTUS frequently inflates the height of his buildings: "the '90-storey' Trump World has 72 floors, while apartment in Trump Tower begin at 'floor 30,' despite there just being 19 commercial stories below them." The president-elect said, quite proud of his marketing magic trick,
They like to have apartments that have height, the psychology of it.
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| Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago, Illinois en.wikipedia.org |
To compensate for its shortcomings, PEOTUS attempted to make up the difference with the size of his sign, his name spelled out in back-lit stainless steel letters that stretch out half the length of a football field, sprawling across the 16th floor. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel called it tasteless and went about changing the city's sign regulations to prevent repeat vulgarity. The serial tweeter that he is, PEOTUS was quick to defend his creation. Quoting the tweet, Mr. Wainwright writes,
Before I bought the site, the Sun Times had the biggest, ugliest sign Chicago has ever seen...Mine is magnificent and popular.
Magnificently large and unpopular
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| Trump Tower Istanbul, Turkey skyscraper city.com |
The popularity of theTrump brand-a euphemism for "Superior Quality, Detail and Perfection," according to the company website-has taken a real beating during the long presidential campaign cycle. In Dubai, where the Trump organization is currently building a golf course, a large billboard featuring PEOTUS swinging a golf club was removed following his announcement to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Sales of his home decor line (really?) were also suspended.
Istanbul, where twin conjoined titling Trump towers loom 150 meters over the city, prompted President Tayyip Erdoğan to declare that,
the ones who put that brand on their building should immediately remove it.
Before President Erdoğan made his comments, the $300 million development did not provide the return investors were promised.
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| Trump Tower hotel Toronto, Canada business.financialpost.com |
The Trump Tower hotel, topped with a reference to the man himself-also opened lated and entered a market flooded with five-star hotels. It was the subject of a lawsuit brought by buyers who claim they were mislead by marketing materials; a local developer is trying to remove the Trump name from the project. Lesson in each case, never take a person at his word and always read the fine print.
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| Trump SoHo New York City, New York hospitalitynet.org |
The litany goes on, from Rio de Janeiro to Azerbaijan, where plans for more Trump towers have encountered obstacles and recent records reveal that his controversial golf course in Scotland have posted losses of nearly £26 million. In short, President-elect Donald Trump may not be the great deal maker that he fancies himself to be. What does feel like to be on the wrong side of his supposed fantastic deal making skills.
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| Trump National Golf Club Photograph by Peter Oberc LLC New York peteroberc.com |
To get an answer to this question, Mr. Wainwright spoke with architect Andrew Tesoro, who was commissioned to design the Trump National Golf Club in upstate New York. The process left Mr. Tesoro on the edge of bankruptcy. He was motivated by PEOTUS's famous enthusiasm and the scope of the project quickly tripled in size-along with the attending workload-but additional compensation did not follow.
By the time the golf club was completes, Mr. Tesoro amassed unpaid invoiced totaling $140,000. After endless requests for payment and meetings with Trump associates, Mr. Tesoro finally met face-to-face with PEOTUS, who supplied "...a textbook lesson in Trump's trademark cocktail of charm and ruthlessness."
Andrew Tesoro said,
He told me that we built the most spectacular clubhouse in the world...I was the finest architect he'd ever met, he was going to make this this project the best-known building of its type in the world, the next project was going to give me the opportunity to recoup any money that'd lost-and, just because I'm such a nice guy, he was going to offer me $25,000 to go away.
Andrew Tesoro initially declined the offer so PEOTUS's attorney got involved. Mr. Tesoro continued,
The attorney told me quite direct that, if I sued, I would probably get all the money I was owed, but that it was his job to make it take so long and cost me so much, that it wouldn't be worth it.
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| AJA Infrastructure onpage americanprogress.org |
We are going to fix out inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals...We're going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by they way second to none.
The spineless American Institute of Architecture was quick to pledge its support for the new administration, writing "that its 89,000 members 'stand ready to work' with Trump on his grand building plan." As it turned out the AIA forgot to consult with its 89,000 members, many of whom rightly pointed out that the incoming president's bigoted statements do not square with the AIA's "diversity and inclusion" (dubious) goals.
The Architect's Newspaper, pointed that architects "who contribute to the 'proposed border wall or its attendant detention centres, federal and private pensions, and militarised infrastructure' would be perpetuating inequality and the 'racist patriarchy of Trump's ideology.'"
In an open letter to PEOTUS, architect and critic Michael Sorkin wrote,
Trump's well-documented history of racial discrimination, tenant harassment, stiffing creditors, 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...
Mr. Sorkin concludes:
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!
Since then, the AIA has issued a gutless video apology, admitting their statement was "tone deaf-" while making sure it stocks up on the latest security fencing and gilded glass catalogue.
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