While I get where they're coming from I do like brutalism to an extent and modern "block" architecture a lot. when they compared these two
ShowShowI personally prefer the second one. Do I think that all buildings should be brutalist or blocky? no, but they have their place and it isn't insigificant. I also like this tooShowI personally dislike the "extra-ness" of a lot of classic architecture. I will definitely agree that cityscapes are bland and lost most sense of uniqueness, but I do not think that the solution is regression to classic architecture. I think they also left out a lot of the more friendly contemporary architecture like these and this
Showthen it comes down to the principles, then--let's set aside objective superiority. if most people like the older looks, should they be made to live and work around buildings that they find unpleasant? (and it really is an active dislike--I look at your last example and on an instinctive level feel that cantilevered (?) projection is threatening me, like it can choose to crush me if I walk under it) or is it problematic that this leads to Kincadeification? then again, is that different than architects' being constrained by the current expectation of what a contemporary building should look like?