A Building that Smiles and Winks

We spotted the design at The Verge, where Attika's Changiz Tehrani justified the architectural expression of icons from WhatsApp like this: "In classical architecture they used heads of the king or whatever, and they put that on the façade. So we were thinking, what can we use as an ornament so when you look at this building in 10 or 20 years you can say 'hey this is from that year!'"

Although the effect is fairly subtle, it's easy to be skeptical. After all, are emojis "2016" versus another year this century? And what about the combination of emojis (which are limited to faces): Do they say something when strung together, like an emoji sentence? And of course, do the emojis merely serve to draw attention to a building that would otherwise be overlooked? Perhaps that's the point, since Tehrani admits, "We always like to put in small details that makes the project a little bit more than a boring building."