There are local authorities, such as the Tory-run Hampshire county council, boasting a 75-strong team of public architects, that continue to design and build schools, hospitals and sports centres with flair and success.
It was built in the 1960s under the guidance of the late Ted Hollamby, a celebrated public sector architect and William Morris devotee who had strong views about the need for buildings to marry in with the public space around them.
But rather than cleaving to the usual protocol — asking architects to make their presentations behind closed doors — Ms. Payton took the process public, requiring each architect to give a lecture to the community.
Daniel Libeskind is probably more at ease in public than any architect since Philip Johnson.
In 1996, the Financial Times sponsored a public competition asking architects, engineers and artists to devise a crossing.
Though reconstructing the old hotel's rooms and grand public spaces tested architects and contractors, the deciding factor was a financial scavenger hunt to find the money.
A video at SculptureCenter, "Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park, 1979-1988," illuminathe the complex negotiations (with real-estate developers, architects, public officials and a swimming pool construction company) behind Ms. Holt's triangular field of gunite spheres.
Its neighbourhoods mostly date from the 1890s to the 1930s, all pastels and gin slings, though the long-lost recent economic boom has left its mark, too, with a new art gallery and public square by architects Herzog & De Meuron, and the obligatory "thing" (Is it a bird? Is it a plane?) by Santiago Calatrava.
Ecological sanitation (EcoSan) concepts, relying on an environmentally sound management of water, nutrient and energy fluxes, have been poorly characterized in literature and are widely ignored by public planning authorities, architects or engineers.
