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	Housing Private Houses Education Healthcare Commercial Arts & Culture Leisure & Exhibitions Adaptive Reuse Lootch, Moscow Letchworth Town Hall Arts & Learning Centre, London St. Monica's, Hoxton Talkback Shepherdess Walk Regeneration Urban Design Letchworth Town Hall Can good design promote local democracy? Can a building influence politics? Our proposal, placed second, for IPPR's 'Designs on Democracy' Competition in 2003 sought to expand and extend the democratic benefits of Letchworth Town Hall. Our design focused on several issues: the town hall as a symbol for and instrument of the democratic process; a de-homogenised government – an accessible democracy; and in engaging the citizen, to bring a community together. Our design draws a distinction between a place for democracy and a place for bureaucracy (i.e., administration). Democracy requires people to meet and talk. Democracy depends on the assembly of people. 'Bureaucracy', the administration of government, requires offices. Our proposal gives form to this distinction, within the political framework of North Hertfordshire District Council and the historic context of the first garden city, Letchworth Convention locates the Council Chamber at the heart of the town hall, lending importance to council proceedings, but also obfuscating the democratic act of meeting from the public realm. In our design there is a direct relationship between meeting place and public realm, where elected members, council officers and the public equally share these spaces. Our design preserves the old town hall. This is linked to a new building which houses offices and an 'Advice Arcade' on the ground. The existing town hall and adjoining new building join to form an L-shaped block enclosing a new square. A second building is sited within this square. This houses the chamber, library, museum, café and e-council. The shape of the chamber functions socially and culturally in 2 distinct ways. At a semantic level it challenges conventional symmetric forms that symbolise hierarchical political power; at a syntactic level the chamber uses simple and organic form to create a complex multi-layered series of spatial conditions.