Ugliness Writ Large: Beyond Boston City Hall Ario Elami August 24, 2023 …the attempt to find a hard correlation between form and sociocultural effect seems as hopeless as it is reductive. For the specialist, it is an extension of the long-attractive notion that architecture is a language, and each building an essay made up of lexical units. For the layperson, it is a faith in a perennial art which found its highest expression somewhere in a virtuous Past.