I'd agree with you if you were talking about generic "commieblock" buildings, but the ones presented in this article are pretty original and have a monumental feel to them. Pretty sad to see your sentiment upvoted this high on HN.
That's a really good book, indeed. Cliff in the book is much less annoying than Cliff in real life, though. I didn't expect him to be such a conservative anti-technology person. A good example is this[1] newspaper article of his. At times, he just seems like a typical attention-seeking contrarian.
What an awful article. The whole "let's imagine how Steve Jobs would do it" thing is so lame and morbid. His whole critique is basically "Why isn't Tim Cook the same as Steve Jobs?!" If you need bullshit "storytelling" to like or buy a product, then that product probably sucks.