alt Hacker NewsSeems fairly simple to me: stop with the naked concrete and brutalist architecture. Old houses before that trend tend to look way nicer regardless of weather. (I'm not an expert on exact architectural style names, so I can't be more exact that that.)
Architects aren't generally brutalists themselves, but rather, brutalist architecture proposals win contracts because their TCO is lower. Facades have maintenance costs; bare concrete just requires power-washing now and then.