Should Public Buildings Be Used For Innovation?

Paolo Tombesi poses the question of what the functions of "large public buildings are or should be -- a question that still resonates in the case of the Sydney Opera House as well as many of its younger siblings.

...How should we look at and assess these extraordinary structures? As opportunities for unique works of art, vehicles for the production of collective identity, cultural billboards, or privileged laboratories for disseminable industrial research? The alternatives presented, of course, imply another question: What makes a public building significant—its presence, its development process, its effects?

...The issue is tricky, because the theory and practice of civic works send out conflicting signals."