To the Editor:

Re “What’s So Great About Fake Roman Temples?” (editorial, Feb. 9), criticizing a proposed executive order that would make classical architecture the default style for new federal buildings:

Everyone can admire the historical legacy of classical architecture, but its time is past. It’s as absurd to insist that every building wear classical dress as it would be to require public officials to don knee breeches and wigs. America is a country that has long embraced progress and freedom; conformity and a single official style are the hallmarks of dictatorships.

Inventive, socially responsible architects flourished in Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1920s, enriching lives and creating buildings that are now acclaimed as classics. Hitler and Stalin suppressed modernism as an alien assault on traditional values and required that all but a handful of buildings follow traditional models. Talent was suffocated or driven into exile.

In the United States as in Europe, most people like what they know and are challenged by the new. But they can be won over by the experience of public buildings that are transparent and infused with natural light — as in the federal courthouses commissioned under the Design Excellence Program. We need more such programs and more challenges to conformity, not a dull repetition of colonnades and pediments.

Michael Webb

Los Angeles

The writer is the author of more than 20 books about architecture and design.