| Hello and welcome to Bloomberg’s weekly design digest. I’m Kriston Capps, staff writer and editor for Bloomberg CityLab and your guide to the world of architecture and the people who build things. This week jewel thieves staged a daring daytime robbery of the Louvre, for all the good it will do them. Sign up to keep up: Subscribe to get the Design Edition newsletter every Sunday.  An excavator works to clear rubble after the East Wing of the White House was demolished on Oct. 23, 2025. Photographer: Eric Lee/Getty Images North America The world watched this week as the Trump administration razed the East Wing of the White House, with little in the way of public notice — no permits, no debate and no review. That isn’t how it’s supposed to work. Historic federal buildings are protected by any number of overlapping preservation laws and agency guidelines. And as one of the most recognizable structures on the planet, the White House is subject to the even greater weight of precedent and norm. As one former official mused to me, you can’t so much as move a painting on Jackson Place without sign-off from the General Services Administration. So how could the Trump administration demolish the East Wing without holding a single public hearing? By tearing down the East Wing before starting the review process for a new ballroom, President Donald Trump forced the issue. It’s a strategy known as “stake-driving,” made famous by New York mega-developer Robert Moses, according to Neil Flanagan, a DC architect and the author of the forthcoming history, The Birth of a Capital. “If you tear down the building, people don’t want to look at an empty hole, so you have the opportunity to leverage, to go to the next step,” Flanagan says. “It only makes sense to accept the change.”  The East Wing of the White House in November 2023. Photographer: Kevin Carter/Getty Images North America The demolition is not illegal, according to experts. But it followed none of the precedents or procedures set forth by Congress, oversight agencies and even past White House occupants to safeguard the history of the People’s House. By seizing on statutory ambiguity and moving with heedless speed, Trump exploited an excavator-sized loophole. Even the president marveled at the speed of the operation. “So they said, how long? I said, how long would it take? They said, sir, you can start tonight. I said, what are you talking about? You have zero zoning conditions. You're the President of -- I said, you got to be kidding,” Trump said at a dinner with ballroom donors on Oct. 15. Federal properties that are 50 years or older fall under the protection of the National Historic Preservation Act, the 1966 bill that launched the industry known as cultural resource management. Section 106 of the law requires the federal government to consider the cultural impact of any sale or alteration of an historic federal building. Architects and builders in Washington are very familiar with Section 106 reviews. The White House is exempt from this law, however. So are the Supreme Court and Capitol complexes, as living buildings with constant needs. Other rules still apply, including an environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to Sara Bronin, law professor at George Washington University and former chair of the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the National Park Service has always conducted NEPA reviews for White House projects. And the White House has traditionally sought historic preservation reviews, despite being exempt. “It’s almost as if the building is unprotected,” Bronin says.  The Jacqueline Kennedy Garden was bulldozed during the demolition of the East Wing. It was designed by Rachel Lambert Mellon, who also designed the Rose Garden, which was also paved by Trump. Credit: Bettmann via Getty Images There is a process for altering federal historic buildings. Such projects go before two federal agencies, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. These agencies oversaw the construction of both the East Wing and West Wing back in the day, and they’ve reviewed every change to the White House since. But these reviews only apply to new construction, not demolition, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. (That’s the subject of debate, with former NCPC members saying the agency also oversees demolition.) So the administration hasn’t submitted its ballroom proposal before NCPC or CFA. Therefore there was no conversation about paving the Rose Garden or demolishing the East Wing. Or the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, which was bulldozed. Or the East Colonnade, including remnants of the original colonnade built by President Thomas Jefferson back in 1805. Any design review for the ballroom would have raised concerns about reducing the East Wing to rubble. This kind of proposal is so rare that a pile of White House bricks from the 1942 expansion sold at auction in June for more than $10,000. But with NCPC headed up by White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf, and given the agency’s statutory authority, there was no risk that the project wouldn’t proceed, and indeed, on Oct. 21, the administration said it will now submit its plans for review. Even if the NCPC had opposed the plan, it wouldn’t have saved the East Wing because these reviews are not legally binding. “They don’t have statutory authority to give yes or no approval,” Flanagan says, referring to the federal oversight agencies. “This process would not stop it either way.” There’s something Soviet about the notion of a building that is so historic, so singularly important, that no preservation effort could save it. But it may not be just the East Wing that falls to the wrecking ball: The Trump administration has identified a number of historic buildings in Washington for disposal. And it has greatly diminished executive staff who deal with history. All but one of the presidentially appointed seats on the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation are vacant. Billie Tsien, the chair of the Commission of Fine Arts, has resigned. And in the early days of Trump’s second term, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency gutted the division of the GSA that performs Section 106 reviews and ensures that historic properties are maintained. “The value of so many of the laws that were set up to protect our historic places is that they provide insight into what’s happening and what’s being proposed,” Bronin says. “This is a process that’s taken place in total darkness.” Design stories we’re writing |  Planned for 5,000 residents in the 1970s, today Arcosanti is home to a few dozen. Photographer: Jessica Jameson About 70 miles north of Phoenix, the desert commune Arcosanti stands as the problematic dream of architect Paolo Soleri. Built in the 1970s and planned for 5,000 residents, today it’s home to just 38 people, who still abide by Soleri’s vision for sustainable living framed by a “neo-monastic” lifestyle. While the social aspect of Soleri’s communal experiment never panned out, other aspects of his “arcology” still hold important lessons for building in extreme climates. Leilani Marie Labong visited Arcosanti to find out if it still works and found connections to other sustainable desert developments, from Culdesac in nearby Tempe to Masdar City in Abu Dhabi.  Midtown Manhattan towers by JPMorgan Chase, including 250 Park Avenue (center), 383 Madison Avenue (center left) and 270 Park Avenue (center right). Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg The phrase “downtown revitalization scheme” entered the lexicon of planners and leaders everywhere in the wake of the pandemic. Combined with the advent of remote work, the disruption of the pandemic was so severe that it forced cities to adapt their urban cores — to revitalize — in order to survive. But as Benjamin Schneider writes in his new history, The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution, past downtown eras had their own problems. Today’s downtown conditions are the result of mitigations to recover from yesterday’s urban crisis, stretching back generations. It’s a circle of life that Schneider explores in an excerpt from his fresh new book, which is out now. Design stories we’re reading | Read Lee Bey: “Going forward, something needs to happen to better protect important federal architecture and development on the capital region in general. Clouded by the East Wing demolition debris is Trump’s proposal to build a knock-off of the Paris Arc de Triomphe on a highly visible site on Memorial Circle, across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial.” (Chicago Sun-Times) Read Philip Kennicott: “Since Roosevelt built the East Wing, in haste during the middle of a war, and President Harry S. Truman added a controversial balcony to the White House in 1948, great care has been taken to make the federal architectural review process more thorough, more deliberate and more transparent. Trump is trampling on that progress.” (The Washington Post) From the archives, a 1903 review of the White House (!) by Montgomery Schuyler, who surveyed the East Terrace addition designed by McKim, Mead & White. (Architectural Record) Ted Barrow writes about Donald Judd’s newly restored Architecture Office in Marfa, Texas, and the experience of seeing what was once a working studio as a museum space: “Judd himself expressed his concerns about the functions of his works with characteristic lucidity: ‘furniture is furniture, it is not art. It is made to sit in, it is not made to look at.’ But parsing Judd’s principles isn’t that straightforward, especially in today’s Marfa.” (Pin-Up) Ana Karina Zatarain talks with planner Román Meyer Falcón about Mexico’s dynamic Programa de Mejoramiento Urbano, which was responsible for the construction of more than 1,300 plazas, landscapes and other public spaces in nearly 200 cities and towns. (Azure) Hawkins\Brown and East have been selected to pedestrianize Oxford Street in London, one of the most exciting public realm improvements happening anywhere. (Architects’ Journal) The Houston home of Victor Lundy, an architect best known for his contributions to the Sarasota Modern movement, was spared demolition. (Houston Chronicle) | 
