The Federal Government Is Looking for Its Joe Gebbia of Architecture

President Trump brought on the Airbnb cofounder to overhaul outdated federal websites. Now, the administration is seeking a new design hire to tackle more trivial matters of taste.

Earlier this year, U.S. Chief Design Officer (and Airbnb cofounder) Joe Gebbia spoke at a press conference alongside President Trump to announce a new federal website for discounted prescription drugs. The site itself is pretty basic: serifed gold fonts, a scroll-to-learn homepage, sparse links. It’s not a miracle by any means, most high schoolers could build it. Still, it’s exactly what Gebbia was hired to do: Overhaul U.S. government websites to make them more navigable as mandated by President Trump’s executive order, "Improving Our Nation Through Better Design." Let’s be real: This is genuinely not a bad idea, as anyone who has had to deal with social security or the IRS websites has experienced what the order calls "digital potholes." Now, it seems, the U.S. is looking for its Gebbia of architecture.

It’s nice when things get fixed, though it seems this figure would be tasked with fixing some things that may not be broken: specifically our public buildings. Much criticism (from authors and architecture institutions alike) has been lobbed at his "Make Federal Architecture Beautiful Again" executive order—requiring new and renovated federal properties be designed in the "classical" or "traditional" architectural styles of Western Europe. This month, the administration took a big step in fulfilling the architectural order’s mandates by posting a job listing for a senior architectural advisor for the General Services Administration (GSA), the entity responsible for maintaining nearly 9,000 federal properties. Think of this person as the technical and aesthetics czar, someone tasked with procurement procedures, project management, and, of course, advising on "architectural standards." But here, we’re looking not just at standards of health, safety, and welfare, as are the purview of most architects; the term "classical" appears eight times in the job listing and there are seven mentions of "traditional architecture." In the senior architectural advisor’s purview, standards are defined by a building’s style. It’s worth asking: Is "style" even a problem worth fixing? 

The John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston, Massachusetts—designed by Walter Gropius and The Architects Collaborative with Samuel Glaser—is on the long list of buildings the GSA was ordered by President Trump to sell off.  

Photos by Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress

Throughout last year, it seemed as if the Trump administration was hellbent on solving one specific issue surrounding federal property—there was simply too much of it. Having campaigned on reducing government expenses, in his first 100 days in office the president ordered the GSA to shed 7,500 federal offices either by terminating leases or by selling off any of 500 "non-core" buildings. With that endeavor came the opportunity to consolidate a federal style. Two of the most architecturally significant properties on this culling list were designed in the modernist style: the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe–designed Kluczynski federal building in downtown Chicago and Boston’s John F. Kennedy federal buildings by Walter Gropius. Later, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that their brutalist Washington, D.C., FBI headquarters would close permanently, citing the Charles Murphy–designed building’s ongoing problem with deferred maintenance. Employees were moved to the 1998 neoclassical Reagan Building nearby, and the fate of the brutalist property is unknown. And, just this week, the GSA announced it would be selling the 1960s modernist Theodore Roosevelt Building, which has housed the Office of Personnel Management.

Unloading modernist federal buildings, however, generated new challenges: Ditching 7,500 offices while the President mandated employees to return to the office en masse doesn’t exactly support federal workers. The GSA itself is struggling to house its own; Government Workforce reported last year that the agency’s office only had workstations for 1,000 employees when 1,200 were expected to be back at a desk even after the Department of Government Efficiency blitzed through the ranks and effectively sliced off about 16 percent of the agency’s employees. At the same time, the GSA plans to quadruple its work, absorbing procurement services from other agencies. Per the job listing, the new senior architectural advisor would be responsible for projects with budgets in excess of $300 million, hinting toward the massive scale and scope of potential additional GSA work (with fewer personnel to support them). 

The Chicago Federal Center designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is another building that was deemed "non-core."

Photos by Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress

2026 is bringing more than a few contentious plans for federal properties. Trump’s handpicked board of directors voted to close the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts citing a two-year renovation to building systems and aesthetics (including, per NPR, new black-and-gold seats with marble seating armrests); he has proposed painting the granite Eisenhower Building white to create some type of visual congruence with the White House; his plan to build a towering, arguably inappropriately-sized arch across from the Lincoln Memorial was approved this week. We won’t go into the White House’s $300 million East Wing ballroom drama.

Of those, only the Eisenhower Building is overseen by the GSA, though it seems suspect that this senior architectural adviser would be working with budgets that precisely match that of the ballroom. Currently there are 35 ongoing GSA construction projects; of those, 27 are ports of entry which are exempted from the order’s neoclassical mandates. The broad parameters of this role might hint that there will be other, much grander taxpayer-funded, traditionally designed government projects on the way. 

The U.S. General Services Administration Building is reportedly set to become the headquarters for the GSA and the Office of Personnel Management, allowing for the sale of the modernist Theodore Roosevelt Building from which OPM currently operates. 

Photos by Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress

See the full story on Dwell.com: The Federal Government Is Looking for Its Joe Gebbia of Architecture
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There’s a Canyon Oasis Behind This $2.5M San Diego Home

Designed by Robert Bowlus for painter Malcolm Nichols, the post-and-beam residence comes with a third of an acre, a courtyard, and verdant vistas—all in the heart of the city.

Location: 720 W Montecito Way, San Diego, California

Price: $2,500,000

Year Built: 1979

Architect: Robert Bowlus

Footprint: 2,730 square feet (2 bedrooms, 2 baths)

Lot Size: 0.34 Acres

From the Agent: "When architect Robert Bowlus designed a home for painter Malcolm Nichols in 1979, the site they selected engaged the canyon setting just a few blocks north of the center of Mission Hills. Straddling six small urban lots, the 2,730-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bathroom residence engages its urban setting with a private court at the entry as well as its canyon setting with walls of north-facing glass (ideal for painting year round). With significant side and rear yards shaded by a grove of trees, the property opens to the natural landscape, sun, and cool breezes that flow effortlessly throughout. The enclosed porch and painting studio offer significant square footage opportunities for the next owner. Recognized easily for its cedar shingle siding, the Nichols Residence exemplifies late-century modern architecture."

The home’s exposed post-and-beam-ceiling is dotted with skylights.

Photo by Ollie Paterson

Photo by Ollie Paterson

Photo by Ollie Paterson

See the full story on Dwell.com: There’s a Canyon Oasis Behind This $2.5M San Diego Home

From the Archive: For $145K, Architect William Massie Built a Curvy Concrete Home From the Ground Up

His clients figured a prefabricated log cabin was all they could afford. Massie built something with more personality for less cash.

Welcome to From the Archive, a look back at stories from Dwell’s past. This story previously appeared in the August 2002 issue.

Keith and Sylvia Owens are a suburban London couple who like to indulge in travel and architecture, albeit in a modest fashion. Seven years ago, they found their way to Montana. The clarity of the sky and horizons that stretch for miles so inspired them that when, a year later, Sylvia read an English magazine, Build-It, advertising 2o-acre plots near White Sulphur Springs, they decided to investigate. After arriving in this tiny town in 1997, they bought the smallest available parcel of Grassy Mountain Ranch. "It was the price of a new car," remembers Keith, an art teacher. They planned to erect a cheap, prefabricated log cabin, sit back, and enjoy the spectacular views. Keith would finally have the time to read more about one of his heroes, Le Corbusier.

Then they met William Massie, a 38-year-old architect who designed solely on the computer and planned to build his concept houses in cheap materials like concrete. At that point, back in 1999, he had never built a home, but he promised the Owens that his experiment would be cheaper than anything they could truck in. Even that log cabin. The cautious-inclined couple took another chance.

Two years later, their 2,000-square-foot summer home is a gleaming four-story tower with shimmering, white elliptical sides. The glass facades front and back make the interior so open to the wild Montana landscape that, according to Sylvia, "we feel like we’re living in it." For the Owens, the house fulfills a lifelong ambition to live in an architecturally daring home. What’s more, they could afford it: The price tag was just $145,000.

The house was a turning point for Massie, too. Since he left the large Manhattan firms James Stewart Polshek and Robertson and McAnulty seven years ago to go out on his own—he supported himself by teaching in the department of architecture at Montana State University in Bozeman—he’s been determined to return modernism to its low-cost heritage. In the mid-2oth century, modernist architects designed their houses to be mass-produced objects like the Model T. "Modernism," argues the architect, "has become this bourgeois condition that costs a huge amount of money, and is rarely constructed in the same materials or vocabulary or political arena as the rest of the country."

With the Owens house, and another inexpensive home for the New York photographer Vicky Sambunaris, Massie is reversing that course, revolutionizing construction technology while at the same time expanding his design horizons.

It starts on the computer. In Massie’s hands, the PC is not a toy on which to concoct something elaborate and hard to build. He has little patience for the deconstructivist antics of a Frank Gehry. "I’m interested in the computer’s ability to simplify, not complicate, the building process," he says.

Massie draws with an $800 nerve-surface modeling program called Rhinoceros. "You take control points in three-dimensional space and push and pull them so you’re sculpting the object," explains Massie. He’s so used to designing this way that he admits to "feeling things in the computer almost with my hands." Every part of the Owens’ house was realized on his Dell PC.

But unlike many other architects who design solely on the computer, Massie moves directly from these models into construction, avoiding costly working drawings that have to be explained to a contractor. He builds the houses himself, operating out of a 200-square-foot garage in a Bozeman industrial park. The office is large enough to fit a bank of computers and four architecture students as adept at programming as they are at pouring concrete.

Massie’s designs all feature low-cost materials, such as plywood and concrete, that can be bought at Home Depot. He’s especially fond of concrete because it’s highly malleable. "It allows me to experiment, and when it’s poured into a beautiful form, there’s nothing more beautiful in the world," he asserts. (He never misses the annual World of Concrete Convention in Las Vegas.)

To realize his forms, Massie relies on a $60,000 computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine. Taking its orders from the PC that stores Massie’s designs, this milling device can carve out a foam or wood mold for a piece of curving roof or a shower basin. "I can machine out a kitchen sink easily," says Massie, standing by the ungainly apparatus as its arm slides back and forth, cutting lines into a four-by-eight-foot block of Styrofoam that exactly match the computer model. "It comes out in negative, like an ice cube tray." The foam mold is then taken to the site, where concrete is poured into it. Once hardened, the piece is ready to be placed in the house.

For larger elements like the 40-foot-long curving wall of the Sambunaris house or the roof of Massie’s own home, he makes the molds in sections, and then glues the resultant concrete pieces together. The curving concrete forms are strong, and can carry more stress than their flat counterparts. On his own house—which is barely a mile from the Owens’ place—he wasn’t satisfied with the engineering analysis for the curved concrete roof sections. "I had to know how strong they were, so I loaded up my pickup and drove over them," he says.

Constructing housing parts in this fashion is inexpensive. The necessary Styrofoam and concrete cost about $40 per mold. Sometimes that’s not cheap enough for Massie. The high, curving exterior walls on the Owens house, for example, are made up of 700 panels, each of which had to be cast in concrete using a standard polystyrene foam mold. The price on these store-bought molds was right—$25—but they produced a flat surface. So with his CNC machine, Massie carved out large custom plywood clamps, which, when clipped to the standard foam molds, bent them into the desired curve. Concrete was then poured in. The walls took three weeks to erect and cost $40,000. The total construction budget was $110,000.

These materials have another, less obvious advantage: flexibility. Take, for instance, the siting of the Owens house. When you drive toward it, the house appears to be standing plumb in the middle of a five-mile stretch of straight highway. Just before you reach it, the road drops away and there’s the house high on the hill above you. To accomplish this visual sleight of hand, before filling the formwork with concrete, Massie’s crew shifted the plywood-and-foam mold around the site until they got the sight lines exactly right.

For all their ingenuity, Massie’s drawing and construction technologies don’t just appeal to a client’s bank account. They also unleash new design possibilities. Massie has always been fascinated by sinuous forms, but as a dedicated modernist he could never find a reason to use them—until Montana’s rolling hills came to the rescue. "Suddenly, I needed curves if my buildings were to have a relationship with this landscape."

Even though the Owens tower is a nod to the grain elevator—it too has Galvalume siding—it is the house’s curvature that pulls it into the hillside. More significantly, it distinguishes the house from the oversized (and overpriced—one of similar size sold recently for $265,000) log cabin residences that dominate other parts of Grassy Mountain. Massie, the low-cost crusader, is thrilled. Says the architect, "If I can produce a house that is standard in terms of its expense but extraordinary in terms of its idea, I know I’m winning."

See more from the Dwell archive on US Modernist.

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Seven People Can Sleep in This 200-Square-Foot Tiny Home

Prefab company Gröna Huset’s adaptable cabins have three bedroom "cubbies" and a living/dining area with built-in furniture for storage and extra sleeping space.

Welcome to Tiny Home Profiles, an ongoing series of interviews with people transforming how we build houses. From prefab tiny houses and modular cabin kits to entire homes ready to ship, their projects represent some of the best ideas in the industry. Do you know a prefab brand that should be on our radar? Get in touch!

After working as a designer for 25 years, Josefin Ljungberg de Jager was spending more time exploring what it means to live well—but efficiently. "I’ve always believed it’s not about the number of square meters you have, but how you use them," she says.

As she learned more about small-space living from her home base in Amsterdam, Ljungberg de Jager launched her own prefab company called Gröna Huset using a prototype she developed for her own family. "I wanted to create compact, wooden homes that feel calm, practical, and intentional," she says. "Spaces where every detail supports daily life without getting in the way."

The prototype is about 200 square feet, yet it’s designed to sleep seven people, with one in the dining nook. "Tiny houses offer a flexible, low-impact solution that can serve many purposes, from garden studios and student housing to guesthouses or holiday cabins," Ljungberg de Jager notes. Below, she shares more about her prefab and how it can be customized to fit the similar mindsets of her clients.

Gröna Huset is about 200 square feet, and it’s designed to be flexible. Owners can use it as a cabin, an office, or a garden shed.

Photo by On a Hazy Morning

Tell us more about the prototype.

My first prototype is still the most meaningful project for me. I designed it for my family, which gave me complete freedom to shape every detail around our life. It became an exploration of balance between function and atmosphere, efficiency and comfort.

The house is placed along the coast just outside Amsterdam, and it’s where we go to step away from the pace of the city. That contrast between busy urban life and a more tranquil, nature-connected space is really at the heart of Gröna Huset.

Working with prefab materials made the process even more interesting. Because the house was built off-site in a workshop, the process wasn’t affected by weather, and I could follow each step closely and refine things along the way. The result is a compact home that feels open, calm, and deeply connected to its surroundings.

The living and dining space has a built-in seating area that can be converted into a guest bed. The coffee table can be raised into a larger dining surface, and there’s storage beneath the seating.

Photo by On a Hazy Morning

What was the cost per square foot?

The house is 19 square meters, or about 204 square feet, with a price of approximately €3,700 per square meter ($371 USD per square foot). But for me, the value is in the thoughtful design, which we can replicate for clients. I like to think of them as tiny houses for many people. They are accessible, adaptable, and designed to offer real comfort within a smaller footprint.

The built-in storage at the center of the room has a desk that folds out. The three cubbies lead to bedrooms that can sleep two adults each.

Photo by On a Hazy Morning

See the full story on Dwell.com: Seven People Can Sleep in This 200-Square-Foot Tiny Home
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Before & After: How a Couple Made Their 700-Square-Foot L.A. Cottage Feel Grand

"When I first bought the house, I was single and the amount of space didn’t bother me," says Jade. "But with two people living here and three pets, it made sense to make improvements."

Jade remembers just how fortuitous it felt to find her Los Angeles house. She had been visiting the city for some time, embarking on what she calls "the long move" from her home state of New York.

Jade works as a psychotherapist but has a background in botany and farming, so she was hoping to land in a neighborhood that had access to nature but wasn’t too far removed from excitement. She found it in Mount Washington, a historic enclave in the San Rafael Hills in northeast L.A.—a place set in the midst of sprawl yet topographically removed from it. "It’s surrounded by nature, and there’s so much wildlife, but it’s also so convenient," Jade says.

Jade, Zander, their dog, and their two cats moved back into their home last May after a complete revamp by Laun. "Doing this renovation was a fun way to figure out how we wanted to spend our time in this space," Zander says. "There were so many decisions, but they made us figure out how to work together."

Photo: Ye Rin Mok

Before: Foyer

After: Foyer

Laun moved the entrance to the south of the house to create a larger kitchen and bathroom. A T.M. Cobb front door and Zia terrazzo tile in Alexander are accented by the custom cherry millwork, which conceals storage space and a litter box. 

Photo: Ye Rin Mok

See the full story on Dwell.com: Before & After: How a Couple Made Their 700-Square-Foot L.A. Cottage Feel Grand
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A Light-Filled, One-Bedroom Apartment in Prague Rises From What Was Once a Bakery

An array of glass brings sunshine into the 620-square-foot interiors without sacrificing privacy from surrounding buildings.

Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post it here.

Project Details:

Location: Prague, Czech Republic

Architect: BekArch / @bekarch_architects

Footprint: 620 square feet

Builder: 4interior&tiles

Cabinetry: Pavlis

Photographer: Ondřej Holub / @byondrej

From the Architect: "From an originally unused bakery workshop building in the inner courtyard, we created a fully functional apartment. The project features one bedroom, a bathroom, and a generous open-plan living area with a kitchen. In place of the former garage door, we designed a large sliding HS portal that connects the interior with the exterior and extends the living space onto a wooden terrace.

"Inside, we chose to preserve the building’s raw qualities—the exposed concrete beam ceiling with skylights brings natural light into the space and creates a distinctive atmosphere. Color accents, combined with natural wood and the kitchen’s stainless-steel surfaces, enliven the interior and give it a personal character. Most of the furniture was custom-designed and made from plywood, bringing together simplicity, functionality, and a cohesive visual identity throughout the apartment."

"The renovation of this inner-block infill space presented an unusual challenge: how to transform a single, enclosed volume into a fully functional living environment without compromising light, openness, or character. The interior was reorganized into a spacious living area with a large media wall, a bedroom with a walk-in wardrobe, a bathroom featuring a walk-in shower, and a separate technical room. Despite the dense urban context, the space benefits from abundant daylight thanks to preserved large-format roof skylights, which became a defining feature of the design.

"The living area opens onto a covered terrace through a large lift-and-slide glass portal. The roofed terrace ensures privacy while simultaneously protecting the interior from views from higher surrounding floors, creating a calm retreat within the city block. The material concept builds upon the existing architectural language of the structure. Original elements such as the reinforced concrete beam ceiling and the skylights were left exposed and intentionally emphasized. These were complemented by additional industrial details, including rebar used as custom door handles and a metal mesh installation that prominently displays a bicycle as both functional and sculptural element. Climbing plants were introduced to soften the raw industrial expression and add a layer of natural texture.

"The floor is finished in Cemflow, a poured cement screed chosen for its ability to level uneven substrates while reinforcing the industrial character of the interior. Although inherently technical, the material has a refined, almost terrazzo-like appearance—an intentional reference to the traditional flooring commonly found in Prague’s historic apartment buildings. Spruce bio-board was selected for bespoke joinery elements, reinterpreting a material typically used in construction and timber structures as a visible interior finish. In the kitchen, the bio-board cabinetry is paired with a stainless-steel backsplash and countertop, a material that reappears in the bathroom on the vanity top, washbasin, and sanitary accessories, ensuring visual continuity throughout the studio."

Photo by Ondřej Holub

Photo by Ondřej Holub

Photo by Ondřej Holub

See the full story on Dwell.com: A Light-Filled, One-Bedroom Apartment in Prague Rises From What Was Once a Bakery

Trees Surround This Brand-New Catskills Home Seeking $2.5M

The courtyard house syncs with its two-plus-acre site with wood cladding, exposed timber rafters, and large picture windows.

Location: 760 Ohayo Mountain Road, Glenford, New York

Price: $2,499,000

Year Built: 2026

Architect: Amin Tadj Studio

Footprint: 2,462 square feet (3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths)

Lot Size: 2.22 Acres

From the Agent: "The main floor is anchored around a central outdoor court, the organizing idea of the whole house. Three distinct wings wrap this interior gathering space, connected by a living and dining area. Full-height doors open directly to the court, where a rock garden, stone stairs, and fresh plantings make the transition to the surrounding deck genuinely inviting. Nearly everything here is custom: the exposed cross-laminated timber rafters were produced in New York and engineered to match the home’s distinctive roofline, down to individually custom-fabricated joist hangers for every unique angle. Partially below grade, a media and guest room offers a genuinely flexible fourth space for overflow guests, a proper home office, or a screening room."

Photo by capture:catskills

Amin Tadj Studio incorporated passive design strategies into the home.

Photo by capture:catskills

Polished concrete floors connect the kitchen, living, and dining areas.

Photo by capture:catskills

See the full story on Dwell.com: Trees Surround This Brand-New Catskills Home Seeking $2.5M
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