Much in what he says …

… The Case for “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Willful, preventable ugliness is always a problem to one degree or another. Here the ugliness involves the self-conscious repudiation of commonly accepted notions of proportion, accessibility, appropriateness, and coherence. The problem doubles when the ugliness is created by government agencies spending the public’s money while in thrall to a special interest like the architecture establishment—in this case, the architects who design the government’s buildings, the critics who praise them, the academics who try to explain them, the trade associations that drape them in awards, and the wealthy civic boosters who like showing up for the ribbon cutting. Everyone wins except for the people who have to visit, work in, pay for, and look at the result.