Part of the problem within this article is the choice of pictures. The first section states, “In nearly every country all people really wanted was a landscape with a few figures around, animals in the foreground, mainly blue.” They then present 9 pictures that reinforce the concept that people all around the world expect the _same_ thing. But that's simply not true. They didn't take that description and give it to ar…
Agree. The author seems to be experiencing a case of what's known as Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. There may be such thing as the AirSpace look, but this may be driven by cost cutting more than actual style. Exposed brick, exposed air ducts, reclaimed wood, brass plumbing pipe lamps with Edison bulbs... All this is DIY stuff you do when you want to keep your expenses at the minimum while making the place look nice, and…
I'd argue, the element of cultural alignment to the universally accepted is predominant, regardless of the price.
(As often, the simple, DIY-style, apparently cheap, is actually more costly. As a fancy example, once VW/Audi sold the same platform twice, once as the more elaborate Audi 80, once as the more base-line, economic VW Passat. Both variants shared the same dashboard with minor variations: the Audi came with sleek control lights behind a smooth cover, whereas the Passat exhibited its economic appeal by a group of bare lamps in the cavities of a basic, moulded plastic base board. However, the Audi dashboard was considerably cheeper to produce, with just a printed sheet of plastic snapping onto the mounts, while the economic appeal of the Passat afforded lights of varying color and a complex moulding of the plastic inlays.)