Public needs background to judge Tamar proposals fairly

Proposals for the new Tamar government headquarters are finally on show. All four presentations offer eye-catching perspectives - with narrated, computer-animated walkthroughs and site models representing its size and form in its immediate city context. After the first dazzling array of renderings, as you look closer and harder, an image begins to emerge.

The projects come across as slightly restrained and conservative, in terms of the expression of forms and the treatment of space. This is not to say that the proposals are not highly professional, but they appear to be the best pragmatic solutions rather than efforts at the iconic and truly inspirational. To satisfy everyone would indeed be nearly impossible, and we must hail our architects for doing a good job in the face of such differing opinions.

In major civic projects anywhere, design is often a heated subject. Architects must try to solve pragmatic concerns, and some even see them as sources of inspiration. After all, solving them is part of the job. When civic projects of this stature use invited or open competitions, only architects tend to be involved. Architects - being the creators of buildings - are best suited for this initial, conceptual role. For Tamar, the government chose to combine the roles of architects and contractors in a 'design-and-build' process. As a result, architects had to balance concerns of the community with the feuding interests of other parties in the consortium.

Fair enough: architects need to design buildings that can actually be built. But when you hamstring their creativity and innovativeness with so much baggage at this early stage, then the full potential of the work will not be realised. This should serve as a lesson that future civic-design projects should be the product of open competition.

To help the public judge these works fairly, the government should consider providing more information and assessment criteria for people to consider when viewing the results.

This way, the public won't have to judge the entries merely on subjective grounds, but could engage in a public consultation process that is helpful and meaningful.