There’s a popular Latin phrase “De gustibus non est disputandum” that’s taken to mean that there should be no arguing over matters of taste because it’s all subjective. On the other hand, what if the point of an art form, such as architecture, is to enhance subjective feelings of well-being, such as making brides happier on their wedding days? If so, it’s pretty easy to come up with objective ways to rate the subjective happiness inducement of functionally comparable but architecturally distinct buildings, such as how much do brides want to have their wedding pictures taken at Boston City Hall (a 1968 concrete brutalist upside-down Aztec human sacrifice platform) versus San Francisco City Hall (a 1915 Beaux-Arts extravaganza that Tom Wolfe admiringly called “this Golden Whore’s dream of paradise”).
When I try to look up “Boston City Hall wedding” I can’t find a single photo of a bride online at the 1968 City Hall. (There are, however, quite a few taken at Boston’s 1865 Old City Hall that now contains a Ruth’s Chris Steak House.) Here’s the closest I could come:
In contrast, there are countless bridal photos online featuring the San Francisco City Hall:
In the argument over architectural taste and city hall architecture, the brides have spoken: the San Francisco city hall is just plain better for wedding pictures than the Boston city hall.
