Is Storing Columns into Rows the right approach

We had lets say 50 columns of a table in Oracle 12c database. We started developing a new front-end interface. 

The dev team has strongly suggested to split all of these columns as key-value pair just into two fields of the table. 

like (attribute_name, attribute_value) as this is the most innovative and modren way other way is old fashioned henced avoided. 

However report developer opposes this approach and said dev team propably have to show one record at a time on the screen 

but report deveoper has to process 1000 of record and in this case each attribute name and its value will require a subquery to bring it as a column,