You can make a building not ugly for no extra cost, all it takes is not letting a batshit insane architect anywhere near the project.
And actually a lot of modernist buildings are incredibly impractically designed too, resulting in more expensive maintenance; there's a reason why for a lot of human history buildings have looked somewhat similar, and it's not just because of technology.
I park my car in the parking lot of the modern, recently built library of my town.
For some reason they surrounded that place with this very smooth, shiny type of tile. All around the building, even the stairs leading down to the parking area, the little outisde chilling place too.
The freaking moment it gets even just the tiniest bit of dew on it, that shit gets so slippery it's crazy. In winter it's like you are doing ice skating.
Another point - the mechanical engineering department at my old university is one of those modern buildings, with a terribly modern multiple-plane roof that looked fantastically trendy in the 1960s.
However, as any roofer could have told you ... all those internal angles on the internal area of the roof trap the water, which, in the real world, rots through the metal frames. Thing leaks like a sieve.
I mean, am I alone in thinking that literally none of my money should be spent on making a government building look good?
Make sure it is functional. Anything other than that is wasted money, and it's MY money being wasted.
You can make a building not ugly for no extra cost, all it takes is not letting a batshit insane architect anywhere near the project.
And actually a lot of modernist buildings are incredibly impractically designed too, resulting in more expensive maintenance; there's a reason why for a lot of human history buildings have looked somewhat similar, and it's not just because of technology.
I park my car in the parking lot of the modern, recently built library of my town.
For some reason they surrounded that place with this very smooth, shiny type of tile. All around the building, even the stairs leading down to the parking area, the little outisde chilling place too.
The freaking moment it gets even just the tiniest bit of dew on it, that shit gets so slippery it's crazy. In winter it's like you are doing ice skating.
Another point - the mechanical engineering department at my old university is one of those modern buildings, with a terribly modern multiple-plane roof that looked fantastically trendy in the 1960s.
However, as any roofer could have told you ... all those internal angles on the internal area of the roof trap the water, which, in the real world, rots through the metal frames. Thing leaks like a sieve.
Fucking physics, messing with muh creative design. Reality can't be trusted to make my vision viable.