Comment by ericmay

To your point, though, I think as you look around at McMansions and Wal-Mart there's nothing architecturally redeeming about those structures besides efficiency in building and internal climate control. We know the architectural styles are bad and there are (again to your point about skill) scientific ways we can measure this (Ann Sussman's work).

If you look at historical architecture patterns (mostly pre-WWI) they mirror how art has changed over time.

It's not that Impressionism came about and Renaissance became shit, it's that both are good and important stylistic contributions.

It's not that Gothic architecture came about then all the Romanesque stuff sucked. Both were good and unique.

We run into the same problem as "all art is equal" when we tend to express the belief that because we live in the time period we're complaining about that if only we waited a few hundred years we would recognize that our current building patterns are actually really good. That's just not the case.