Art can be useful when it is integrated into useful products. I have always admired cultures that make everyday useful items beautiful, and always been bewildered why Americans and Europeans think that art is something that should be confined to ugly buildings in the middle of our ugly cities, with special visiting hours. I have never understood "utilitarian aesthetics".
Notoriously, Le Corbiseur wanted to demolish the buildings along the Seine and replace them with his ugly Stalinesque monoliths.
I also think that useful things should have something called "character". I live in an older neighborhood with a number of funky old buildings whose history and lifespan are written into their refurbishment and funky attempts at repair. One of them has two free-form turrets of mismatching sizes, and windows built at odd spots around the house. Looks like something out of a Japanese anime (Howell's Castle). I love them. But you go to certain suburbs, and everything is boxy, boring, indistinct, and looks "dead".
