Beauty is one of the functions of a building. Pursuing "form over function" without considering beauty leaves you with a shantytown. >Who gets to decide what i

Beauty is one of the functions of a building. Pursuing "form over function" without considering beauty leaves you with a shantytown. >Who gets to decide what is beautiful? If one of the goals of a building is for people to visit it and to spend time around it and to enjoy the experience, then the community of people who will have to live with the building should have the most say about what is beautiful for them. One issue with some architects is that they don't have "skin in the game" when it comes to the buildings they design. They can come up with interesting concepts and visions that may seem appealing as a model or impressive to their peers, but if they don't have to walk by it every single day, then their opinions about what is beautiful should not be a dominating and overriding factor. In the specific case of university donors, they have a particular vision for what the aesthetics should be, and it's their support that makes the university continue to run well and it's their personal connection to the university that makes them care. Their objectives of beauty should be more important in that particular case than a designer who will be moving on to the next project.