"The 90,000-square-foot room is a perfect expression of Trump's unfailingly plutocratic worldview. It is a flex of his tragically warped idea of strength, and most of all it is a convenient way for gutless corporate CEOs to pay tribute: Donors to the ballroom construction fund include casino mogul Miriam Adelson's Family Foundation, Amazon, Apple, Altria Group (formerly known as Philip Morris)... and those are just the A's."
"The ballroom is many things, but it is not exactly a work of architecture. Yes, it has an architect, a man named James McCrery, and there are models and renderings. Yes, if completed, it will be a building. But if you look past the conceptual artwork that Trump has held aloft for the cameras, it's just a box. You might think of it as the kind of box you see along the highway, a Best Buy or a Walmart."
"However, unlike those retail boxes, the ballroom has a coffered ceiling, arched windows, gold chandeliers, and an exterior seemingly marked by at least two separate sets of Corinthian columns. If the guests to Trump's galas are lucky, the ballroom will also have a mammoth kitchen and sizable restrooms, although there's no sign of those in the images we've seen thus far. But Trump's ballroom isn't a ballroom. Rather, it's an object lesson, the perfect exemplar of Trump's tendency to get things wrong."
The $300 million ballroom will occupy the former East Wing footprint and measures 90,000 square feet. Donors to the construction fund include Miriam Adelson's Family Foundation, Amazon, Apple, and Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris). James McCrery is the named architect and renderings show a coffered ceiling, arched windows, gold chandeliers, and multiple sets of Corinthian columns. The building's scale and form more closely resemble a large retail box than the modest White House residence. Images show no obvious mammoth kitchen or sizable restrooms. The project operates as a conspicuous expression of plutocratic display and aesthetic misjudgment.
Read at The Nation
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