Will the government finally stop giving the concrete finger to popular taste by erecting ugly, expensive and unsustainable buildings with taxpayers’ money instead of fostering a civic architecture that speaks the language of American democracy?

The leaking of a draft directive that calls for a return to ‘Classical and traditional styles’ in major public buildings in Washington DC has occasioned outrage and contempt from the expected quarters: architects who know best and journalists to whom the exterior of a public building is an obstacle to be surmounted on the way into the corridors of power.