[ElemenoPicuares]

That's because I wasn't talking about design: I was talking about expertise.

My professional discipline shares some baseline knowledge with architects and I enjoy architecture, but I am not an architect. I know enough about it to realize that you're better off listening to an architect talk about architecture than me, and way better than someone with no design background at all.

Aside from my design discipline, I was also a classically trained chef, and also spent quite some time as a software developer. The number of times a person from an engineering-type background haughtily "explained" my areas of expertise to me is gob smacking. I'm far beyond the point in life where I feel the need to hold my tongue when I recognize someone speaking with authority well outside of their expertise, especially if they're getting attention by doing so.

[ketzo]

Is the author really speaking with “authority,” though? If anything, they go out of their way to remind the reader that “your taste may differ from mine.”

It just reads to me like someone sharing an interesting idea they discovered. I feel like any accusations of haughtiness are a little overblown.

[ElemenoPicuares]

For example: "This makes a lot of sense to me. Because order and variety is what we experience in nature. For example, trees and mountains follow recognizable patterns, they have shapes that allow us to categorize them. Yet each tree and mountain is different and unique. The human body, as well, has forms common to all, it has symmetry and proportion, yet each individual is different.

What makes these monster buildings so unsettling is that instead of a delicate balance of order and variety, they have too much of both. The moster building has too much order - it's a box with long rows of windows. But the façade also has way too much variety because of the AC units and the mishmash of colours and window frames."

(a bunch of declarative statements about hotels based on visual analysis)

"But I think this kind of visual trick could find application in high-rise residential buildings to make façades look nicer and gentler."

They are making technical design analyses of buildings, criticising architects based on that, and making recommendations to architects for future work. Professional design critique also includes matters of artistic opinion mixed in.

Developers and their ilk spend all day thinking up solutions to novel and difficult problems in ways that really matter, and that's awesome. Irreplaceable. At times it seems like the only thing between us and an incredible shining future in so many domains is just having enough dev time to do the research and solve the problems! The other people in the process just sort of fall to the wayside while developers do the real work.

Many developers forget that their knowledge is domain-specific, and no matter how broad the applications are for their skills, it doesn't increase the value of their perspective beyond code. Every designer I've met who's worked in tech, and many others such as communications people, managers, support people, etc have been frustrated by this exact attitude. Confidently weilding criticism and dismissing ideas in realms far outside of their expertise.

If people publicly criticize the work of professionals without the requisite knowledge, they shouldn't be taken aback when someone tells them they're taking out of their tuba.