Akin's Law 38: "Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say."
But, I think one missing piece between architects and the general public is how architecture students are taught to design (and thus, see) buildings first through the lens of massing [0]. When you compose a building primarily by shaping the different masses, you lose sight of the ornamentation and complex decoration that sets old buildings apart. Then, you add air conditioning and modern building systems and the need for high ceilings and windows with airflow also disappears.
What you are left with is a sealed box. Essentially, architecture has ceded too much design space to engineering in the name of cost optimization and there isn't much 'art' left in it. But look around - that's true across our society.
It gives them some clever thing to know that normal people don't know anything about. If King Charles is right about architecture (he is), then what new experimental architecture can you research? You can't, because we've basically already discovered what people like.
On a serious note, I've seen conspiracy theories about how such ugly modernist architecture is being used to break our spirits, to make us numb to ugliness and to promote an acceptance of mediocrity. While I originally dismissed it, I've become old enough to see many beautiful buildings replaced with caricatures of them. I'm starting to wonder if there weren't a kernel of truth to these ramblings.
I think the biggest problem with them is that the minute you stop maintaining things like gardens in contrast to the concrete and let it get dirty and scarred, it looks apocalyptic and stressful very quickly. Whereas even quite dilapidated neo-classical-ish buildings look innately reasonably pleasing.
There's a trend in some Eastern European countries to paint older brutalist concrete buildings as a cost-effective measure to reduce concrete spalling and do thermo-modernization. It's actually pretty amazing how much nicer some of these buildings look even with just a uniform white paint job (others involve more color).
Architects seem to be largely opposed, seeing it as an erasure of the material honesty that brutalism was supposed to represent, but IMHO it suggests that a lot of the core issue with these designs wasn't the shape or creativity of the buildings themselves but just the way the concrete look quickly aged.
Well, let's try crank the knob yet another notch then.
> Maybe the majority is actually correct
What a horrible thing to say. The liberal democracy, may it be known to you, is about protecting and empowering the minorities of various kind, and the aesthetical minority exists, and its tastes matter.
> traditional architecture is just plain better
It's unsustainable [citation not needed].