I think that Christopher Alexander (the architect that coined the term 'Design Patterns' which the software industry adopted) solved this issue half a century ago. Buildings used to have a 'pattern language' that made sense in the cultural context and with the technology available of the place where it was built. But in modernism, we developed a machine like approach to building and there was a battle to strip buildings of ALL tradition in order to make way for efficiency, mostly in construction costs. However, many of these inefficiencies in what Christopher Alexander calls 'living' architecture, had developed through generations of knowledge passed down from skilled laborers, and we severed that tie in the last century. To fix this, we have to reignite the focus on craft by the people designing and building, and to adopt the learnings of traditions, which Alexander spent a lifetime documenting. We already have the answers, and while not perfect, it certainly is at least a much better starting point than every building being a complete blank canvas for an artist to paint based solely on their imagination, and judged on how new it is.

Design school claims to have moved past the 1930s mentality, but in my experience, it was mostly about proving to each other who is the smartest person in the room rather than how the architecture produced encourages life.