There is a water treatment plant between the place I'm currently living and downtown Toronto. I sometimes bike here on my way to or back from yoga. It's more beautiful than it needs to be. What time is it from? I haven't even googled it.
It is the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant by architect Thomas Canfield Pomphrey, 1932.
Many of the people I know who come from utilitarian backgrounds have come to appreciate ornament. I include myself in this group. Why did we change our mind? It is because we discovered our heart. In discovering our heart we didn't abandon the mind, it is not one or the other, or even one after the other: passion and reason become intertwined to form a single thread, more robust than any of them alone.
Why arches when rectangles will do? Because the people who built this cared. We have come to a race to the bottom, where the cheapest and quickest solution wins. Beauty is a hard sell in today's world, we must fight for it.
A world devoid of beauty is a life devoid of pleasure. But putting beauty first is a life driven by pleasure. The heart should not dominate the mind, or the other way around. They dance in harmony.