Trump's White House ballroom architect has 'totally baffled' colleagues by taking on the project, report says

Source: Yahoo! News/The Independent

Sat, March 21, 2026 at 5:45 PM EDT


Shalom Baranes, the architect who agreed to see through President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom addition, has baffled colleagues in Washington, D.C. by taking on the controversial project late in his career.

Baranes, 75, is a longtime, well-respected architect in D.C. who has worked on dozens of contemporary additions to federal buildings. He also has a history of being critical of the Trump administration’s harsh anti-immigration policies, as the son of Jewish Libyan refugees who came to the United States at 6 years old.

“Why would he do this?” and “Wonder if the firm needs the business?” were among the questions posed by the reports and editors at Washington Biz Journal in December when they announced that the architect they had been covering for nearly 20 years had agreed to take over the 90,000 square-foot ballroom project.

“I am totally baffled why he would take this on,” Nancy MacWood, a preservationist familiar with Baranes' work, told the New York Times. In an interview with the New York Times last week, Baranes repeated his criticisms of the Trump administration, saying: “What’s happening now is heartbreaking.”

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-white-house-ballroom-architect-214516907.html