But the contemporary built environment is not the millennials’ legacy; it is their inheritance. They didn’t ask for cardboard modernism — they simply capitulate to its infantilizing aesthetic paradigm because there is no alternative. Or if there is an alternative, it’s between an $8 ice cream cone or an $11 ice cream cone (or a $49 ticket to the Museum of Ice Cream).
time to discuss everyone's favorite subject: aesthetics! is everything actually ugly? are aesthetic critiques of modern living fascist? that's for you to decide!
Everything is so ugly because it's designed to be.
Commercial real estate is designed to be as neutral as possible, so you can copy & paste whatever benign mass-appealing inoffensively fake friendly personality of the chain you drop in.
Accompanying commerical signage is designed for function, not aesthetic, ie for people driving, usually down a long strip of competitive commerce. Walkable cities would not function this way. This pours into housing too-- cities are designed for people with cars, not people.
New Housing is basically a short term scam in the making, full of shoddy materials and poor construction that looks "good" for pictures, but will massively fall apart in only 10-20 years. The proximity of homes is used to maximize land space for profit, details often cropped out of real estate ads.
Most design now for anything, from homes to breweries, has become homogenized by multi national companies. It's why so much of say the United States looks & feels exactly the same. It lacks any perspective or personality because it's designed to be as unoffensively neutral as possible, in an environment built for cars instead of people.