While walk-ups have never been the most glamorous buildings in the city, demand for and sales of these buildings have reached new highs recently.
Thirty years after the Columbus project was begun, the dean of the college of art and architecture at the University of Cincinnati also had an idea about using glamorous buildings to attract attention, and the school hired Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, and Henry Cobb.
With a sea change (partly generational, mostly philosophical) overtaking architecture, and attention turning from glamorous buildings and celebrated designers to broader issues like urbanism, public space, social responsibility and collaboration, "Common Ground" is well intended but, alas, a missed opportunity.
Certainly, the problem of architecture is not in glamorous buildings like the World Trade Centre; the real issue is the living city, low-cost housing, parks and so on".
Dr Compton agreed: "St Pancras Station was considered ugly by the Victorians but it was saved and is now one of the most glamorous buildings in England, becoming the scene in recent years of the Harry Potter books and films".
Building a fibre-optic backbone or putting plasma screens into schools may be much more glamorous than building electrical grids, sewerage systems, water pipelines, roads, railways and schools.
"It's not sexy and glamorous, like building a new wing," he said, "but I think it's a fundamental part of our responsibility to our audience".
The normally easy-going capital has had its share of demonstrators calling for measures to tackle the food crisis instead of building glamorous projects.Some of Mr Wade's friends fear he has dynastic ambitions.
We've heard at various times that Google has a legion of engineers working on the not so glamorous task of building hardware drivers.
While Dubai focused on tourism, property and consumption, building glamorous hotels and resorts to attract the world's wealthy, Abu Dhabi took the more conservative approach of investing in innovative technology, striking partnerships with General Electric on green energy and Siemens on railways.
