> This opinion puts you in a very small minority...
Statements like this always make me think about how the majority of americans believe that buildings can be haunted by spirits or demons or that ESP or telekinesis are real.
I think we need to be honest about the low merit of appealing to how well the average person's brain works.
The building itself is stunning. Look at every ground-level photo of it ever taken that doesn't include the plaza. But the feeling of standing next to the building has always been devastated by the blight of the plaza, and people are mostly incapable of separating the two. It only feels ominous looming conspicuously over a barren wasteland.
This has been quite improved relatively recently by plaza renovation (https://www.sasaki.com/projects/boston-city-hall-plaza-renov...), but that project was only completed at the tail end of 2022 so most people who have capital O "Opinions" about the building have never actually seen it in a less blighted context.
> I think we need to be honest about the low merit of appealing to how well the average person's brain works.
This is the architecture equivalent of blaming software usability problems on the user. If the average person can't use your product or appreciate your building's design, then the design is flawed - end of story.
This opinion puts you in a very small minority, to put it very kindly.
It is a poster child for the dystopian, a cubist insult to anyone who has the misfortune of laying eyes on it. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here".