"Trump's presidential library skyscraper makes sense"

Critics who bash Donald Trump's design concept for a presidential skyscraper library are too fixated on style and not on the wider trends in architecture's uptake in politics, writes Matt Shaw.

Amidst the spiralling US-Israel war with Iran, Donald Trump thought it a good idea to release early renderings of a concept for his presidential library. Led by his son Eric, the Donald J Trump Presidential Library Foundation, Inc has set up a website for its fundraising, using seemingly AI-generated visuals to display a skyscraper for downtown Miami's shoreline overlooking Biscayne Bay.

Trump's library tower, designed by little-known studio Bermello Ajamil & Partners, has a certain amount of Miami swagger, with a glass facade carved diagonally like SOM's Freedom Tower in New York (complete with red, white, and blue spire) and bifurcated down the middle. It is an American habit to make skyscrapers monuments to the rich, and many architects are happy to take part. Zaha Hadid Architect's One Thousand Museum, an uber-luxury residential tower, is just three blocks north of the site.

It is pretty much what you would expect from Trump, and from a Miami skyscraper

Otherwise, it is pretty much what you would expect from Trump, and from a Miami skyscraper. And maybe even from a Presidential Library. Though it is certainly a break from convention (something I thought was celebrated in design?), as it introduces a potential "hotel" program into a presidential center. If a student proposed this in a design studio, it would get a positive reaction.

"I don't believe in building libraries or museums," Trump said on its release. Though this might seem a radical departure, it is honest in a way. Presidential libraries are not really libraries, but rather monuments to these "great" men. IM Pei, fresh off the award-winning Boston Government Center, was tapped for the JFK library. George W Bush's library was designed by Robert AM Stern. The Lyndon B Johnson library has a gift store, an animatronic LBJ, the president's limo, an introductory theater, and an LBJ timeline.

The critics, predictably, were quick with their knee-jerk readings of Trump's scheme. It seems every time a Trump-backed design is unveiled, critics jump to make connections to Mussolini or North Korea, almost always pearl-clutching with a whiff of "I-know-better-than-you" elitism, as if Walter Gropius's opinions are the laws of physics or an architecture degree is the only knowledge possible to understand a building.

The media bubbles that keep us separated from anyone with a different view apply to architecture, too.

Rather than trying to assess why this twice-democratically-elected president's architectural style is not in line with that of our filter bubble, these critics just rehash the same arguments. I don't agree with almost any of Trump's policies or actions. And yes, the Air Force One in the lobby and endless gold are characteristically gaudy in a way I wouldn't personally design it. But I think there is more to understand about how we got here and why Trump appeals to people. Ignoring it has gotten us nowhere since 2015.

The mask comes off at Trump's library

Beyond the good works of presidents and global dictators, the most telling comparison here is between Trump's library and Biff Tannen's Pleasure Palace, the casino/hotel/residence of Biff, the villain in Robert Zemeckis's 1989 film Back to the Future II, who was reportedly modeled after Trump. Its two vertical piers flank a giant Biff sign at the top, like the American flag and Trump insignia on the library.

The ground floor in Tannen's hotel is much like a presidential library: it has an exhibit dedicated to the career of Biff, complete with an animatronic Biff. The building is central to an alternate, dystopian present brought on when Marty McFly and Doc Brown disrupt the "space-time continuum," giving ultimate power to Tannen, the high school bully. His rise represented the corrupt and decadent future that had come to pass.

The mask comes off at Trump's library. There is no hiding the authoritarian impulses of what Arthur M Schlesinger Jr called the "imperial presidency". The gold statue is the gold statue. There is no pretence of a more civil attitude, such as Obama's dark, phallic library in Chicago, where an opaque stone-faced veil obscures the interior operations, much like Obama's soaring, feel-good rhetoric obscures his own expansion of executive power and drone strikes in Libya.

The library is brash and somewhat unconventional, but it is decidedly not classical, or even traditional, the other recent critique of Trump. Its sleek modernism is more akin to the towers of Hudson Yards or any of the neo-international style corporate glass-box slops we see dominating every skyline. It is not a particularly inventive skyscraper. Of course, Trump is a developer, and this tower is his tower. It will fit right in in Miami, like a pied-à-terre from Mar-a-Lago. It makes sense for Trump, and for Miami.

There is a certain charm to Trump's complete rejection of what he perceives as conventional wisdom regarding architectural taste

There is a certain charm to Trump's complete rejection of what he perceives as conventional wisdom regarding architectural taste, which runs counter to almost every cultural institution. Why is that? Much ink has been spilt about the classicism "mandate," the triumphal arch, and the enormous ballroom he is building. However, even the "mandate" does not actually mandate a style, even for federal buildings.

In fact, it is mostly meant to upend the progressive, 1964 Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture, which promoted high modernism. The new August 2025 Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again executive order was meant to "uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public." Trump's library skyscraper is not classical, and no one can say it doesn't fit in with Miami.

This could be a populist policy, designed to reverse what many perceive as out-of-touch institutions (The General Services Administration) and the design excellence that "experts" have been building. There seem to be lessons here about the language of architecture in politics that go beyond style. Modernism was once iconoclastic, and if you bind architecture to a wider movement, you can build a lot.

It should be noted that the foundation is not yet approved as a non-profit, and could retain its for-profit status indefinitely. As the Miami Herald noted, a presidential library is one way for a sitting president to raise money without disclosing the names of donors. They also reported that the foundation plans to raise $1 billion over the next three years to fund the vision, while he is still in office.

Corruption is what we should be watching out for, not trying to score points by judging Trump's taste.

Matt Shaw is a New York-based author, editor, and columnist. 

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