If OP is refering to the benefit I get in Architecture skill improving by year 3 of rebuilding my Still and Kitchen, 8 times over, from the 6-10 bitter beards, that are now stronger than my last 2 dead sheriffs, I get his point. Why I'll have the best looking and designed well, for suicidal dorfs to jump into, this side of Hillock heaven.
I have a 3 year old fort and this is what I have been doing.
It's a volcano embark, so there's lots of obsidian. I have given every dwarf at least a 3x3 room, dug into some valuable material, smoothed and engraved, with a bed, weapon rack and chest, items made of at least bismuth bronze quality metal, unless they have a preference. I dig down to the room in the center tile so all the walls are unbroken with no doors, although some of them have precious metal hatch covers on top. My favorite place to put these is directly next to the volcano so that some of the walls are obsidian, and where possible, there are at least a couple gemstones, metal ore like hematite, or other valuable substance.
Also, the magma-adjacent walls are "warm detailed obsidian." I'm pretty sure it has no measurable in-game effect but I like the idea of the rooms being toasty warm from natural heat.
I have rapidly fulfilled requests for temples and guildhalls, and put instruments and drink stockpiles in them. I have also made all the guildhalls open to all long term residents and citizens, and put a workshop related to the profession in the hall itself, or even a small farm in the farmer's guildhall.
I have built a legendary dining hall that routinely causes good thoughts. Similarly I have built a well and a meeting hall around it, the well of only the finest components (one of my favorite artifacts to get are artifact-grade buckets, chains, etc. that can be used in wells).
I have also made a large indoor "outdoor" farm for a large variety of crops and buy every single plant that comes in a caravan, for 20+ different kinds of booze, and routinely change up the crops that can fill a 15x15 area. So there's a good chance of any dorf getting high quality booze when they want it or satisfying a preference.
So far almost everyone's stress is below zero, often in the -10000 to -20000 range. The only dorfs with positive stress were generally involved in some traumatic event, like the catastrophe I caused while digging the outdoor farm because I am too dumb to figure out safe channeling apparently, and the occasional encounter with some inordinately tough cave critter. Voracious cave crawlers have been a bit of a pain. Even the "stressed" dwarves are below 1000 although if they continue ticking upward I may have to intervene.
I haven't even done anything fancy like mist machines yet, although I think getting soap production up (other than what I already have for the hospital) is a good next step.