Had to take the subway a few days ago… noticed this and snapped a photo. Remember: Enabling smooth shading isn’t important just in Blender, flat shading looks weird in real life too!
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In that case, the ‘flat shading’ at least helps the disco ball do the thing it was designed for (which is spray specks of light everywhere and create sparkling reflections).
The subway wall, is there any point to facet the sides like that? Combine that with the impression given by the lighting and it looks like something a beginner slapped together in 5 minutes. It would be interesting to put this on a popular art forum, get a ton of 1-2 star ratings and afterward say it was a photo.
From what I remember and could figure, the pillars in that station have a sort of hexagonal design rather than being perfectly round. Normally that doesn’t look out of the ordinary, especially for architecture still dating to the day of the Soviet Union. You can slightly see the individual panels at the bottom.
Once you tighten a smooth cloth-like fabric around them though, such as dressing it with a commercial panel, you get the exact same effect as a cylinder with flat shading in Blender. It’s funny to think no one else there would even bat an eye at that… my Blender trained brain quickly picked up on it xD
The joke (in the image you posted) is that we still have to wait a few more years until Cycles finally supports that level of accurate caustics and light ray reflections 
yep quite a challenge!