I've got such mixed opinions on this. On the one hand, as an architect and designer, I understand the need and importance of good design. A good looking building has immense value that we can't tangibly measure and even perceiving the rewards is tricky to quantify. But the benefits of good design exist nonetheless. To quote
an article I recently read...
Quote:Adding to this refresh is Louisa Talks Buildings, a TikTok account with more than 392,000 followers run by 18-year-old Louisa Whitmore. "My perspective is ‘man on the street looking at a building,’ which I think is a very important perspective because those are the people who are actually experiencing the building," says Whitmore
And that's very true. Who experiences buildings the most? The people who live, work and travel amongst them. Not the architects, designers, critics etc. So a good looking building is important. We can look at the disasters of 20th century modernist social housing to see that a cold, lifeless environment generally has a negative psychological and socioeconomic impact when your surroundings look depressing. London has tore down countless buildings because they bred anti-social behaviour as the environments were awful. Meanwhile, you had more playful architects like La Corbusier who, even when designing "social" housing or buildings, would still be playful with his work by utilizing colour, sound, light etc and now his buildings are timeless works of human civilization.
But then at the same time, not every building needs or can be designed to be nice and that's especially true in residential structures. You need to at least try to make them look fine, but they don't need to win awards. Residential architecture is very much a functional thing and housing people is the most important thing. So while this is a pretty generic looking apartment block, it's like...oh well, build it anyway because that's 254 new places for people to live in.