The answer lies within the pages of The Fountainhead.
I spent a week in April 1993 staying at the Olympic Village (or what was left of it) in Moscow. Pretty much all concrete. This was after the 1991 coup attempt but before the 1993 Yeltsin coup.
Spent another week in Aktau, Kazakhstan at a form sanitarium on the Caspian sea. Again, all concrete and a beach made up of concrete blocks. Oh, and the malls and stores, such as they were - all concrete. Spent a few nights getting liquored up by the locals and their families. Wasn’t all bad. Camel yogurt is actually pretty good.
Correct. Dull, ugly art inspires a dull, ugly civic spirit and pessimism (nihilism). The artists who lead the Renaissance, and the Americans who were responsible for the Greek Revival, and I dare say it, Art Nouveau (okay, euros here) and Art Deco were striving for beauty and symmetry.
Beauty inspires beauty and optimism.
we were warned