What counts as an architectural style?

Trump recently declared that all federal buildings are to be built in a "classical" style. In my opinion, limiting federal buildings "classical" styles is ignorant, Gothic and Georgian are in no way similar but are both listed as classical styles, this shows Trump's ignorance to the story and the connotations of the individual architectural styles that are considered as "classical".


https://atkeyandco.com/identifying-georgian-victorian-and-edwardian-period-architecture/


“There is style, and there are the styles.” - Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

This statement is contradictory in the sense that it perfectly describes the relation and the differences between the two words. The singular 'style' is used to describe a manner of doing something for example you can have a style of writing or swimming. Then there are 'the styles' the categories of things like styles or genres of music, styles of architecture and so on and so forth. In architecture especially, this quote perfectly represents the classification of styles, the styles are the "Classical" or "Modern" and then the style is Georgian, Gothic, Greek or Brutalist, Constructivist and Neo-Futurist.

I like to think that the aforementioned quote perfectly sums up the confusion of Donal Trump, it shows his ignorance and lack of understanding towards architecture. 

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