The Nazi Block

ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars.

In the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district of Berlin, there’s an enormous concrete structure that sits across the street from a supermarket. It’s obscured by trees, surrounded by residential apartments, and gently flecked with German graffiti. 

VIVIAN LE: Okay. Check one, two, one, two. It is 8:34 AM. I am quite possibly the most jet lagged I’ve ever been in my entire life. And I’m waiting for my Uber, or as they say here in Germany, my “Über.”

ROMAN MARS: We sent 99PI producer Vivian Le there to check it out. 

VIVIAN LE: Jet lag be damned, I met up with Hanna Feesche and Vincent Bruckman. Hanna is the curator and deputy director for the Tempelhof-Schöneberg Museums, and Vincent is a journalist and tour guide. They were there to show me around a curious neighborhood landmark. From afar, it kind of looks like a derelict, brutalist grain silo. 

VIVIAN LE: Is it a popular site for people to visit–this one? 

HANNA FEESCHE: Yes. For Tempelhof-Schöneberg, it is the most popular.

VIVIAN LE: And it is the least aesthetically pleasing? [LAUGHS]

HANNA FEESCHE: [LAUGHS] That is true.

ROMAN MARS: This structure is a bit hard to describe because there’s literally nothing else like it in the world. On the surface, it’s a very, very big, very, very heavy cylindrical block of solid concrete about the height of a four story building.

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: This concrete… 12,650, I think, tons of concrete… 

ROMAN MARS: And sitting underneath those 12,650 tons of concrete is a narrow chamber about 8 feet in diameter that descends 60 feet into the ground.

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: There’s a ladder here that we can’t use now, unfortunately. And then it goes, I think, 18 meters into the ground. 

VIVIAN LE: Have you guys ever crawled down there?

HANNA FEESCHE: No, it’s not allowed.

VIVIAN LE: This entire structure was designed to test the soil in this area of Berlin. That chamber was once an observation area where researchers measured how the soil below was responding to the pressure exerted by the weight of the cylinder on top of it–whether the cylinder itself was shifting, sinking into the ground–exciting stuff like that. 

ROMAN MARS: People from all over the world come to Berlin to see what is essentially an abandoned soil testing research tool. And the name of this unusual tourist site is just about as easy to pronounce as it is to describe.

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: In German, it’s “schwerbelastungskörper.” And in English, it’s the “heavy load bearing body.” Does it make sense in English even? 

VIVIAN LE: Not entirely. 

VIVIAN LE: The schwerbelastungskörper is kind of a tongue twister. But luckily there’s a few other simpler nicknames for it. The “cylinder,” the “concrete cylinder,” the “concrete mushroom,” because it sort of looks like a mushroom…

ROMAN MARS: But locals in the area have referred to it by a much more nefarious nickname. 

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: It used to be the nickname “Nazi Klotz.” A “klotz” is, like, a heavy kind of stone that you put onto something. And “Nazi,” so it’s kind of like “Nazi block.”

ROMAN MARS: The Nazi block…

VIVIAN LE: The schwerbelastungskörper is not famous for what it does but who built it. This big, crumbling piece of concrete was actually the first step in a monstrous urban planning scheme dreamed up by Adolf Hitler. 

ROMAN MARS: Thankfully that plan never materialized. Now, this Nazi block is one of the only remaining monuments to the Third Reich’s most colossal architectural failure.

VIVIAN LE: There was a phrase that leaders in the Third Reich said about architecture–that it was “worte aus stein”, or “words in stone.” It means that architecture has a specific ability to bypass language and reasoning to have a direct impact on a person’s emotions. If you’ve ever walked into a family friend’s farmhouse-style home and immediately felt a sense of coziness or had your breath taken away while standing at the top of the Empire State Building, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Architecture can move you and shape your actions in ways that you aren’t even aware of. 

ROMAN MARS: Hitler not only understood this innate power about architecture, he weaponized it. 

DESPINA STRATIGAKOS: When we think about architecture and weaponization, especially around the Third Reich, you know, you might think about the Atlantic Wall or bomb shelters…

VIVIAN LE: This is Despina Stratigakos, an architectural historian at the University at Buffalo. 

DESPINA STRATIGAKOS: But there are a lot of ways in which architecture can be instrumentalized for ideological purposes that are not maybe as obvious, but that can be very powerful.

ROMAN MARS: Hitler was infatuated with art and architecture enough that he was famously rejected from art school a couple of times. Even early on, he spoke openly about the ways architecture and power are intertwined. 

DESPINA STRATIGAKOS: If you look at Mein Kampf, and I hope you won’t… But if you want to torture yourself, in Mein Kampf, he writes about the importance of architecture and particularly the importance of architecture to create the Volksgemeinschaft. And the Volksgemeinschaft is this absolutely central concept in National Socialism. It is the racially unified community. 

VIVIAN LE: The Volksgemeinschaft literally translates to “people’s community.” And the concept was central to Hitler’s racist and antisemitic ideology. It claimed that there was a “racial hierarchy,” which there isn’t, and a “ideal way of German life,” again, which there isn’t.

ROMAN MARS: Look, Hitler was an ahistorical idiot who made a number of false assertions. One of them was that the ancient Roman Empire represented the peak of human civilization and that Germans were “racial ancestors” of the Romans and therefore at the top of that hierarchy. 

VIVIAN LE: Which they aren’t. 

DESPINA STRATIGAKOS: Hitler’s looking in particular at ancient Rome and more specifically at the public buildings–the state buildings–of ancient Rome. The temples, the baths, the Colosseum… And he says that in its great monuments, a culture expresses its most profound values. It shapes the Volksgemeinschaft. And also he’s thinking about the things that will remain when everything else fades away. And he says, “Wars come and go, but it is the art and the architecture of a civilization that remains.” So, he’s thinking about this long before he gets into power. 

VIVIAN LE: In 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and finally had the political power he needed to create these monuments. 

ROMAN MARS: He just needed an architect to actually build them.

VIVIAN LE: Could you tell me a little bit about Albert Speer?

MAGNUS BRECHTKEN: How many hours would you like?

VIVIAN LE: This is Magnus Brechtken, Deputy Director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. 

MAGNUS BRECHTKEN: Albert Speer was a highly ambitious young architect. He was the son of an architect. His father made a lot of money. His mother had a lot of money, so Albert Speer was completely financially independent. He could do whatever he wanted.

VIVIAN LE: And what he wanted was the resources and backing of the Nazi party. 

ROMAN MARS: Speer was sufficiently talented as an architect, but it was his charm and ruthless ambition that landed him in Hitler’s orbit. 

DESPINA STRATIGAKOS: Albert Speer would magically appear whenever Hitler was coming to do a tour of the construction site. You know, a few minutes beforehand, there was Speer. And he would join, you know, the architects and the patron. And they would walk around the site. And, you know, the workmen would just kind of make jokes about this young hanger-on. But Speer was there to learn. Like, he was there to learn and to figure out what it was that Hitler wanted–what he liked and what he didn’t like–and to be noticed.

VIVIAN LE: Speer was still a relatively young man when he had a streak of good luck. Hitler’s top architect suddenly dropped dead. At 28 years old, Speer was launched into the position of chief architect for the Third Reich. 

ROMAN MARS: Hitler apparently loved pageantry, and Speer was more than happy to cater to his theatrical whims. He was tasked with staging the notorious Cathedral of Light display at the Nuremberg rally grounds and designing a new Reich Chancellery. 

VIVIAN LE: Soon after, Hitler entrusted Speer with his most ambitious design project yet. 

DESPINA STRATIGAKOS: He wants a capital that is architecturally worthy of being the center of a global empire.

VIVIAN LE: In 1937, Hitler declared five cities as “Führer Cities”, which meant that five cities–Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich, Hamburg, and Linz–would all become cultural capitals in a future Nazi-dominated Europe. 

ROMAN MARS: Each city would offer its own special contribution towards the Third Reich. Linz, Hitler’s favorite city, would become the center of culture. Munich would be the Nazi party headquarters. Nuremberg would be the city of Nazi party rallies. Hamburg would be the capital of putting a piece of meat between two pieces of bread.

VIVIAN LE: Berlin would hold the highest title of them all. Hitler believed that Berlin would become the capital of his “Greater Germanic Reich” and the Nazi seat of power to the rest of the world.

ROMAN MARS: But there was one glaring problem with Berlin carrying that particular title. 

PAUL KUREK: Hitler did not like Berlin at all. 

VIVIAN LE: This is Paul Kurek, assistant professor and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan. Hitler understood that Berlin was an important city to the cause of National Socialism. It was the capital city of Germany and a cultural center populated by millions of people. But for Hitler, that culture was all wrong.

[CABARET MUSIC AND CROWD AMBIENCE]

PAUL KUREK: Berlin, in the Weimar Republic, became known in the 1920s as this kind of really progressive city with a lot of cabaret. And people were kind of, you know, experimenting with different identities and sexualities. And it was very decadent. So, he did not like that at all–this kind of progressive environment.

VIVIAN LE: I don’t know, it sounds pretty cool to me. 

ROMAN MARS: And outside of its politics, Hitler also hated the city on an aesthetic level. 

PAUL KUREK: Berlin was kind of all over the place. It was the kind of epitome of modernism. You know, there was Bauhaus and all of these styles that Hitler despised.

VIVIAN LE: Hitler’s disdain for progressive, modernist Berlin meant that the entire city would have to be rebuilt from scratch. Hitler even proposed that, once the complete urban redesign was finished, the city would be renamed Germania–a name that he believed evoked unity of the German people. 

ROMAN MARS: In 1937, Hitler gave Speer near complete control over all building projects throughout the city. And he was granted essentially unlimited budget and resources.

PAUL KUREK: Speer, as a matter of fact, had more power than anyone else when it came to building. So, he always wanted more and more and more and bigger and bigger and bigger. 

VIVIAN LE: This Berlin 2.0 was planned to be everything that the city was not: rigidly symmetrical, ordered, devoid of color… And given Hitler’s obsession with ancient Rome, the buildings would need to be stylistically reminiscent of imperial Roman architecture.

ROMAN MARS: But these buildings wouldn’t just be neoclassical. They would be monumental, meaning that the city would be built on a massive scale never before seen. 

MAGNUS BRECHTKEN: I mean, it’s just huge. It has no sophistication. 

VIVIAN LE: Magnus Brechtken again.

MAGNUS BRECHTKEN: I mean, if we talk about architectural history and how architects think buildings–yeah–it’s always about size, to form, to function, to human dimension, and so on. Yeah. So, it’s a combination of finding the best formula when you build something. And this is just to quiet, to impress them, and to push with violent might away every kind of obstacle against your own ideological conviction. 

ROMAN MARS: When it came to architecture, Speer did not put much thought into creating a satisfying user experience for those living there. Instead, he focused on how these buildings would propagandize Hitler’s beliefs, how they would intimidate, and–surprisingly–how they would eventually die.

PAUL KUREK: Yeah, that’s the famous Ruinenwerts Theorie or Theorie des Ruinenwerts. He said the way he designed his buildings was with the foresight that, in thousands of years, they will just be ruins.

VIVIAN LE: Speer claimed to have conceived of a design principle that he called “ruin value.” Hitler and Speer believed that every empire comes to an end, and the Third Reich would be no exception. Hitler used to marvel at the ancient Roman ruins, and he wanted civilizations of the future to do the same at his buildings. By avoiding materials like steel rebar and concrete facades, which tend to erode in an ugly way as they break down, he thought their monuments could decay more gracefully. That way, even after the Third Reich ended, their pretty, pretty ruins would pass on their racist ideology long after they were gone.

PAUL KUREK: So a kind of antiquity was coming together with the past, the present, and the future all becoming one. And that captures what the Nazis really believed.

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: Um, yeah. So, we’re basically now on top of this platform, which was built next to the Schwerbelastungskörper. And we’re basically on the same height as the top of the heavy load bearing body. So we can kind of have the panoramic view of Berlin and also what the National Socialists were planning to do.

VIVIAN LE: Back in the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district of Berlin, I followed Vincent Bruckmann up a platform about 14 meters above street level. This weird concrete cylinder I’d come to Berlin to see was marked as the starting point of Speer’s proposed redesign for the city. 

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: It’s really important to understand that everything or most of what the National Socialists were planning was not constructed.

VIVIAN LE: Vincent showed me how Speer and Hitler planned for this Nazi megacity to be framed by two long intersecting axes, one of which would be an “avenue of splendors” that ran 4.3 miles from south to north. It would serve as a celebratory parade route. 

ROMAN MARS: And looming at the end of this avenue would sit a structure that would define the city.

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: This is basically the direction where you can imagine this hall, Volkshalle, Great Hall, Hall of the People, which was kind of the center of the plants. 

ROMAN MARS: Years before he became leader of the Nazi party, Hitler sketched two architectural drawings that he one day wanted to build. The first was a colossal “Volkshalle,” or “People’s Hall.” It would have been a massive, neoclassical assembly space, inspired by the Pantheon, only–you know–bigger. 

VIVIAN LE: The Volkshalle featured a copper dome that towered nearly 88 stories high and would have fit up to 180,000 spectators inside. For reference, that’s nine times more people than can fit in the crypto.com arena. 

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: And they thought that even there was kind of a microclimate within the hall if there were–I don’t know–180,000 people within there. They were even thinking if there were condensation clouds because there were just so many people in there. And you must imagine it was supposed to fit, like, almost 200,000 people, which is huge.

VIVIAN LE: It’s just rain made of, like, sweat and spit and breath. [CHUCKLES]

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: Yeah. 

VIVIAN LE: Gross. 

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: Exactly.

ROMAN MARS: At the beginning of the parade route would be the other monument that Hitler sketched. It was a triumphal arch commemorating the German soldiers killed in World War I. Structurally, he wanted it to be reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, only–you guessed it–bigger.

PAUL KUREK: This triumphal arch was planned as the southern gate to Germania, the new Berlin. And so all the tourists–international tourists–would have arrived at this train station in the south and then walked up to the arch. And then they would have seen, in the distance, on the other side of town, this huge congregation hall.

ROMAN MARS: The buildings would be built on a scale never before seen in human history, which came with one very obvious structural engineering problem. 

PAUL KUREK: There was no data supporting the fact, will the ground even carry these monstrous monuments? 

ROMAN MARS: The ground in Berlin is very difficult to build on. The city sits on swampland, so it has mushy, cushy soil.

VIVIAN LE: You know what doesn’t pair well with all that mushy, gushy soil? The weight of the largest buildings ever conceived. The triumphal arch in particular was exponentially more complicated because all of the weight of the entire monument would be concentrated onto narrow pillars. This meant that the ground pressure exerted by the arch would be incredibly intense.

PAUL KUREK: And if you want to build the biggest of everything, well, you need technological solutions for that. 

ROMAN MARS: And Speer’s technological solution was to build… [MISPRONOUNCING] Schwerbelastungskörper.

PAUL KUREK: Schwerbelastungskörper. [LAUGHS]

VIVIAN LE: In 1938, Speer was assigned to carry out any testing necessary to construct Hitler’s mega monuments. And part of that testing was the construction of the Schwerbelastungskörper, that heavy, concrete cylinder. 

ROMAN MARS: The reason why it was so big and so heavy was because the weight of all that concrete was supposed to simulate the pressure of one of the arch’s pillars pushing down onto the ground. Those 12,650 tons weigh more than the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, and the Christ the Redeemer statue combined. 

PAUL KUREK: And also in terms of soil pressure, it even puts more pressure on the ground than the Cheops Pyramid in Egypt. So, it is really extraordinarily heavy.

ROMAN MARS: Not much is known about the actual construction process of the cylinder. The Nazi party kept details of this megacity project under a tight lid mainly because the complete reconstruction of Berlin would have demolished somewhere between 50 to 100,000 homes in the middle of a housing crisis. 

VIVIAN LE: That was, of course, not even close to the worst consequence of Berlin’s urban redesign. It was Jewish Berliners who were targeted first for deportation, and the labor and materials for the project would be supplied at a horrifically inhumane cost. 

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: There were a lot of people who suffered from it–for example, the Jewish population of Berlin, but also the forced laborers who had to build these projects, and also the inmates of the concentration camps who were responsible for bringing the building material, like the stones and the bricks.

ROMAN MARS: In 1941, the concrete cylinder was completed. But by that time, it didn’t even matter anymore. 

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: The “problem,” air quotes, for the National Socialists was that the war started. And then there was the question of how to proceed.

VIVIAN LE: By this point, the U.S. had entered World War II, and Hitler’s makeover for Berlin would have to be tabled.

ROMAN MARS: Soon after, Speer was promoted from general building inspector to minister of armaments and munitions. He was responsible for maximizing war production. So, rather than using slave laborers to build Germania, he used them to produce weapons and war material for the German war effort. 

VIVIAN LE: Speer was no longer an architect. It was his job to make sure the Third Reich could maintain its military operations. And it was a role that he was, unfortunately, very good at. 

MAGNUS BRECHTKEN: He is responsible for keeping the war going for months on end when the war was lost and he knew that the war was lost. In the last year of the war, more people died than in the previous five years combined. Every day the war was prolonged. On average, more than 16,000 people died per day, on every single day. So, every day the war went on, another 16,000 people were killed. Speer knew this, and he went on regardless.

SPEER VERDICT ARCHIVAL: The tribunal is of the opinion that Speer’s activities do not amount to initiating, planning, or preparing wars of aggression or of conspiring to that end. He became the head of the armament industry well after all the wars… 

VIVIAN LE: In 1945, after the war ended, Albert Speer appeared before the court at Nuremberg, along with 20 other National Socialist leaders.

ROMAN MARS: But over the course of his trial, Speer once again used his charm and charisma to get his way. He condemned Hitler and offered the Allied Council valuable details about how he achieved such a productive war economy for Germany. In the end, he was only sentenced to 20 years in prison. 

VIVIAN LE: I mean, he did spend 20 years in prison. He was found guilty. But in your opinion, did he get away with it? 

MAGNUS BRECHTKEN: Yes, of course. Of course. I think most people who knew what Speer had done– And he himself knew what he had done. You see his reaction. There’s a film with his reaction, and he… [GASPS] He instinctively knew, “I’ll survive.” Yeah, sure, he got away with it, you know?

ROMAN MARS: While serving out his 20 year sentence, Speer authored a bestselling memoir about his time as “Hitler’s architect.” He filled it with claims of remorse and left out the extent of the part he played in the war. By the time he was released from prison in 1966, some historians even referred to him as “the good Nazi.”

ALBERT SPEER [ARCHIVAL]: Hitler said it to me. “You are my eye detect, and you will do it for me.” I was on the way to be one of the most famous architects in Europe…

VIVIAN LE: And Hitler’s monumental world capital was a city that never came to be. Almost no piece of architecture from this grand urban redesign of Berlin survived. 

ROMAN MARS: Except one thing… 

HANNA FEESCHE: It wasn’t even possible to tear it down after the Second World War because it’s too big. 

ROMAN MARS: Albert Speer’s Concrete Cylinder. 

VIVIAN LE: What would it take to tear it down?

HANNA FEESCHE: A lot of “sprengstoffe.” 

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: A lot of “dynamite.” Yeah. 

VIVIAN LE: The Schwerbelastungskörper was a 12,650-ton block of solid concrete in the middle of a city surrounded by residential buildings and train tracks. So, blowing it up with explosives after the war was out of the question. Berlin was sort of stuck with it.

MICHAEL RICHTER [TRANSLATED]: It wasn’t really used by anybody. And also except the scientists and the engineers, no one really had any interest in it.

VIVIAN LE: This is Michael Richter, an architect and one of the leading historians of the Schwerbelastungskörper.

MICHAEL RICHTER [TRANSLATED]: So, it was more of a pragmatic approach to this building. 

VIVIAN LE: Richter says that, within just a few years of World War II ending, the German Society for Soil Mechanics picked up the geological research where the fascist structural engineers left off, only minus the fascism. For decades after the war, civilian scientists quietly used the cylinder to generate lots of data on how to build very big buildings on top of really squishy soil. It’s actually been helpful for structural engineers all over the world. 

MICHAEL RICHTER [TRANSLATED]: It also has a high scientific significance because a lot of the information that we know today about building in this kind of soil we actually have from the research that has been done on this cylinder. So, between 1948 and up until the mid ’80s, the experiments that the engineers did on this specific structure is where a lot of the information today comes from. 

VIVIAN LE: Why is it that in the 1980s it stopped being used? 

MICHAEL RICHTER [TRANSLATED]: No one had any questions left.

VIVIAN LE: In 1983, having run out its use, the concrete cylinder was pretty much abandoned by researchers and fell into disrepair. 

ROMAN MARS: It sat neglected for about a decade until the district realized that this space could be of some use to teach people about what almost came of Berlin. The cylinder was listed as a protected monument in 1995. And today, it’s the only tangible relic of the National Socialists’ master plan for Berlin.

VIVIAN LE: Even though it’s a protected monument, the Schwerbelastungskörper was never built to last. It wasn’t constructed with the best materials since it wasn’t even supposed to be seen. So now the concrete is crumbling. The district has even had to set up netting around the outside of the cylinder so that chunks of it don’t fall onto people’s heads.

VINCENT BRUCKMAN: I think it would be sad if this structure would not exist anymore because, I think, actually it is a little embarrassing for the National Socialists because there are a few other things but what is really visible from, from this planning, Germania, to change this megalomaniac world capital… And then you come here, and it’s just basically this, like, concrete block.

VIVIAN LE: When Speer dreamed of the ruins his buildings would eventually become, he probably wasn’t anticipating that they would be ruined so soon or take the form of this decaying concrete cylinder. But in a way, it’s the perfect object to preserve Hitler’s grand urban planning vision. There is no beauty. There is no glory. It’s just an ugly piece of history set in stone. 

ROMAN MARS: More with Vivian after the break…

[AD BREAK]

ROMAN MARS: So, we are back with 99PI producer Vivian Le, who just brought us that story. Vivian! How are you doing?

VIVIAN LE: I am exhausted, Roman. How are you? Thanks for asking, by the way. 

ROMAN MARS: I’m okay. Well, so what do you want to talk about today? 

VIVIAN LE: Yeah, I don’t know if I necessarily want to talk about this. It’s just something that has to be addressed. But Roman, as you are aware, on the first day of his second term in office, Donald Trump issued a memorandum called Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture. It’s basically, at its core, an order to promote the use of “traditional and classical architecture” for civic buildings.

ROMAN MARS: And this is something that he did back in 2020 at the end of his term, right?

VIVIAN LE: Yeah. Yeah. So, Donald Trump signed a version of this executive order in the waning days of his first term in, like, December of 2020. I remember, even back then, everyone here at 99PI was like, “What the [BLEEP] is he talking about? But Trump claims that the purpose of the order was to “uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States.” Biden overturned it pretty much soon after he got into office in 2021. But now it is 2025, and we are back, baby.

ROMAN MARS: So, even back in 2020, what was Trump trying to accomplish with this order? 

VIVIAN LE: Basically, Trump wants to make classical architecture the preferred style of all federal buildings. The Founding Fathers famously wanted the design of the Capitol to evoke ancient Greece and Rome. And so classical was the de facto style for about a century and a half. But of course, tastes change over time. So in 1962, the GSA, which is the agency that oversees federal property, revised its guiding principles for federal architecture. And they stated that an official style should be avoided and that “design must flow from the architectural profession to the government, and not vice versa.” And so you see that the most common style for federal buildings built between the 1950s and the 1970s actually was brutalism. And Roman, you and I both know that brutalism has been a very divisive style for a very long time. 

ROMAN MARS: For sure. For sure. 

VIVIAN LE: Someone else who apparently hates it is, of course, Donald Trump. And his argument is that we, in this country, have stopped building beautiful buildings. An early draft for the 2020 executive order was actually titled, “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” which is very on the nose.

ROMAN MARS: I mean, it’s pretty much echoing the rhetoric that Trump always says, which is about America returning to greatness. So, returning to a classical style of architecture, in his eyes, is the return to the glory of the past. 

VIVIAN LE: Yes. Now, if you listen to the story that we just played, you might already intuit why many people are concerned with this particular rhetoric. Critics have argued that when the far right and/or white supremacists push for a return to “traditional values of classical architecture,” they specifically mean a return to the values of traditionally white, traditionally European, and traditionally Christian heritage. And the styles that deviate from that are bad.

ROMAN MARS: Right. And since these federal buildings are the buildings that represent the United States, it’s easy to see how the arguments against diverse architectural styles are arguments against diversity writ large. 

VIVIAN LE: Yes, it’s very culture war but make it architecture. This has basically become a debate about what American identity is supposed to look like.

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. Yeah. So, there’s been a lot of noise on either side of this order. But I’m curious what the real world impacts are of this executive order because, actually, there’s not a lot of federal buildings being built at any one moment. So, what does it actually mean?

VIVIAN LE: First of all, I do think that putting limitations on creativity is bad. Also, who is Trump to define what beauty is?

ROMAN MARS: To be sure.

VIVIAN LE: [LAUGHS] Yes, I have seen his buildings. They are hideous. But I will admit that this, so far, hasn’t been the most consequential move he’s made since getting back into office, mostly because he’s done so many terrible things. As of recording this, the GSA is facing much bigger problems, so we will have to see how this will be implemented. There has been some speculation that one thing it could have a direct impact on is the J. Edgar Hoover building, which is FBI headquarters. It’s this big, blocky, brutalist, concrete building with these perfectly aligned square windows. And it kind of looks like a house of waffles–not a Waffle House but, like, a house made out of waffles. 

ROMAN MARS: That’s right.

VIVIAN LE: So, it has apparently been falling apart for quite some time. And the plan has been to rebuild a new facility in Greenbelt, Maryland. But Trump has been very vocal about this, posting in all caps, “THE NEW FBI BUILDING SHOULD BE BUILT IN WASHINGTON D.C., NOT MARYLAND, AND BE THE CENTERPIECE OF MY PLAN TO TOTALLY RENOVATE AND REBUILD OUR CAPITAL CITY INTO THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND SAFEST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.” So, there’s that. That might be indirectly impacted by this. 

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. That is very reminiscent to the story we just heard. To me, what is interesting is that the stories behind these design choices–they’re all kind of based on non-truths. I mean, what we see in the main story and from this executive order is a kind of cherry picking of history that is just wrong. I mean, what Hitler and Trump and even the Founding Fathers did was kind of use architecture to tell a kind of incorrect and pretty much ahistoric version of what the past was like. I mean, ancient Greece did not look like the white, austere Lincoln Memorial. It was full of color, and it was chaotic–and just the paint just wore away. And so, you know, we see it as sort of monochromatic, but it really was a mix of things. So, not only is it sort of problematic in its execution, it’s also kind of just wrong on the face of it, which is sort of, you know… I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s the most important part of it. Maybe the values are more important than them being wrong about it. But it’s still doubly wrong. 

VIVIAN LE: Yes. And I will say that the debate with classical architecture today–it’s become more of a political battle than about aesthetics at this point. And I don’t necessarily think that if you think that the Parthenon looks nice, you are a racist. Or if you hate the FBI headquarters, it doesn’t mean that you’re not progressive. But the thing that I’ve run into over and over again while reporting the story is that architecture is always political and you can’t separate the two. So, you know, what you build, where you build it, who’s it for, and how it expresses your values… It’s all political, man. 

ROMAN MARS: That’s right. So, yeah, I totally agree. When I go to Washington, D.C. and I see the Capitol building in particular, it awes me. Like, it does the job that it’s supposed to do. And I think that is a great and noble thing–to feel like this sense of permanence and strength and… All that stuff that centered on the U.S. Capitol building–I totally feel those things. So, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if somebody comes up to you–one of these trad architecture bros comes–and talks to you about the values of traditional architecture, man, turn on your heel and walk the other direction because that point of view is a linked trait to a bunch of even more horrible ideas and ideologies. So, just walk away. 

VIVIAN LE: For sure. [LAUGHS]

ROMAN MARS: Thank you, Vivian. 

VIVIAN LE: Thanks, Roman.

ROMAN MARS: 99% Invisible was produced this week by Vivian Le, and edited by Joe Rosenberg. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real, George Langford, and APM. Fact-checking by Graham Hacia. Translation and tape sync by Sara Zarreh Hoshyari Khah.

Special thanks this week to Paul Kurek and the Berlin Underworlds Association.

Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor.

The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jayson De Leon, Emmett FitzGerald, Christopher Johnson, Lasha Madan, Kelly Prime, Jeyca Medina-Gleason, and me, Roman Mars. 

The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence.

We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast Family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building… in beautiful… uptown… Oakland, California. You can find us all on Bluesky–that’s where we’re meeting with the public these days–as well as our own Discord server. We have private discussions about The Power Broker, about architecture, about flags, about this and that… There’s a link to that Discord server, as well as every past episode of 99PI, at 99pi.org.

I know. I know. This is… I need to get… I literally can’t say this. Schwerbelastungskörper… Schwerbelastungskörper… Schwerbelastungskörper…