While I'm sure that it's also a style-choice, it may have also been partly functional. The building was built in the 60's, and I believe that it was intended to

While I'm sure that it's also a style-choice, it may have also been partly functional. The building was built in the 60's, and I believe that it was intended to host strategically important computing power in its basement, which was designed to protect this asset in the case of a nuclear attack (it was the cold war). IIRC, there was a slightly-lower sub-basement in the center of the building which was the effective bomb shelter. In any case, I think the article is complaining mostly about the unoriginal glass clones that have gone up over the last twenty years.