That's still just "looks prettier". Yes, there is a degree at which the design is so ugly it interferes with its intended function, but we've taken the opposite up to 11. Negative space in modern design constantly interferes with intended function. Take a listing on an on-line store. A design making copious use of negative space may look stunningly beautiful, but a design that just follows the Gestalt principles but otherwise crams in 5x the number of items on a screen will make it easier for the user to choose the right item to buy, and will consume less of their time.

(This is not an invented example; when I was building a PC recently, I wrote userstyles to remove most of the negative space in UI of a shop I was buying parts from, just to not be driven to madness when trying to compare prices and features among available components.)