[brimble]

Yeah, it's those, I just couldn't recall the term for it. Much of the ugliness seems to be a choice, though—lots of weird, haphazard nooks and crannies and bump-outs, and bizarre color schemes that seem designed to dazzle you into not noticing how ugly the unevenly-bumpy exterior is. If they just flattened out the exterior walls a little and cooled it a bit with the crayon-box color scheme, they'd look much better.

[letouj]

In many cases, the superfluous nooks and crannies on 5-over-1's are mandated by local zoning rules that call for "façade articulation" on buildings occupying larger amounts of street frontage (I suppose to conceal the unthinkable horror of a big building existing in a city).

See e.g. Portland, Oregon's façade articulation guidelines: https://www.portland.gov/sites/default/files/2020/lu_buildin...