@circuitrider , fair point.
but Exley is in a spot making it a meaningful part of campus and it defines many view corridors. If it were a few more blocks away, it might not matter so much.
at any rate, go back and look again at the renderings. I believe those plans contemplated keeping the tower and adjoining it to the new structure, but it also contemplated, I think, completely re-cladding it with materials that would help it fit more harmoniously with the buildings nearby and make it overall more aesthetically pleasing.
I hear you … architecture styles change, and I know that brutalist and related mondern styles were all the rage in the 60s and 70s, and even the 80s. But I have had a hard time talking myself into liking it. Architecture, for me, is two things: function and aesthetic emotion. The first we can evaluate critically and logically. The second is, I’m afraid, too subjective for that.