People are looking for objectivity in vain. Beyond basic structure, there is no objectivity in art, music, architecture, fashion, etc. That is, you can make the

People are looking for objectivity in vain. Beyond basic structure, there is no objectivity in art, music, architecture, fashion, etc. That is, you can make the argument that a discordant piano piece is objectively worse than one that follows well-worn progressions, and that would be pretty believable, but saying that a piece with more tremolos than one with no tremolos is objectively better just doesn't work. Ornamentation is taste, and taste is very cyclical. If you grew up in an over-the-top ornamented place, it's very understandable that you'd view the simple clean lines of modernist architecture as a revelation. OTOH, if you grew up in bland generic International Style places, it's perfectly understandable why you'd yearn for something beyond basic shapes. You can't separate taste from the environment you grew up in, your predisposition for novelty-seeking etc. FWIW, I think we're near the end of the modernist cycle. A lot of us grew up in very bland environments and now we want something more. But 100 years ago, the same thing we're now decrying was a breath of fresh, calming air in a suffocating environment.