This is a good test to apply to architectural styles. People often cite Fallingwater (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Fallingw...) as a triumph of modern architecture. In my view, it only really looks good because of its surroundings. If you'd erase the trees and river, it wouldn't look good anymore, especially if you zoom in to the rounded off smooth brown slabs. If, on the other hand, you erased the house and kept the trees and river, it would still be a beautiful scene. If you replaced the modern house by any old watermill constructed by 18th century peasants, it would look just as good as what a famous modern architect was able to achieve. Therefore, I claim people's aesthetic senses are primarily responding to the trees and water, and not to the product of the architect.

A similar phenomenon occurs when architects place a modern building in a scene of beautiful classical architecture, sometimes even connecting the new building to the old. The "beauty" of this type of modern architecture is parasitic on pre-existing beauty and cannot stand on its own.