Robin Hanson points out that biological systems that have a useful function are not necessarily optimal when put in new environments. This reminds me of an interesting interesting article by Witold Rybczynski where I learned that the structural engineer Ove Arup agreed:

…The idea that the correct functional, the correct structural and the best possible aesthetic solutions are one and the same thing must, I am afraid, be abandoned together with the older philosophers’ dream about the harmony and ultimate identity of truth, goodness, justice and beauty.

For example, Orup wrote:

A wall like the one at Highpoint would have been cheaper to build with bricks, but [Lubetkin] claimed it was functional and economic. It wasn’t functional at all: it had to be “Modern.” Functionalism really became a farce. What is wrong with a sloping roof? They can’t afford to pay what it costs to make a flat roof really waterproof. Lubetkin didn’t care. He just cared for the picture in the architectural magazines.

Personally, I think a lot of architecture problems arise because the designers are not the users.

For example, when I was teaching at U. Chicago in the 1990s I went one day to Chicago’s celebrated new public library. The building was indeed beautiful but it was hard to get to the books. You had to enter and go to the 4th floor (I think it was), and even there, there were vary few books, on little shelves that were only about five feet high. Give me a cramped old-style library any day!

On the other hand, we actually participated in the design of the offices in the 9th and10th floor of our new building (where the statistics dept is located) and it seemed reasonable at the time, but now we realize that the design is terrible, with offices all over but few opportunities for interactions. The political science department, in an ugly beat-up old building four blocks over, works much better.