For my personal modeling experience i walked back to the ancient builders and looked, how they built structures.
There are not so many different basic shapes, aside decorations and you can freestyle with them, whatever you want.
When you look close to segmented pillars for example, then there will you find the same basic shapes in midlevelstructure decoration.
But they follow rules, break them and you break the look.
My english is not good enough to describe it better, sry.
