I've always said that if I have to spend a lot of time explaining my code, I'd rather take the time to rewrite it than be doomed to explaining it for its lifetime. But I'd cut your architect who was replaced some slack. Maybe what he did was more complex than necessary, but I guarantee there are other people who could have made it more complex.

I say that after leaving a project where I thought the architecture was too complex to join one where essentially there is no architecture!