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Greater London Authority
As leader of the Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone used his imposing County Hall headquarters as a propaganda tool in his power struggle with Margaret Thatcher, aiming billboard-sized messages of defiance across the Thames to the Palace of Westminster.

Now mayor of London, Livingstone's future headquarters are being built two meanders of the Thames downstream, out of Tony Blair's sight. Instead, the GLA building squares up to another, perhaps greater, seat of power: the City of London.

Lord Foster's £45m squashed sphere design has been remodelled since early comparisons to fencing masks, testicles and the lairs of James Bond villains. Clad substantially in glass, it sends out messages of transparency and accountability: gently spiralling ramps draw the public in from a ground-floor piazza round the balconies that look down on the debating chamber and then up to a rooftop terrace.

The building is steaming ahead on time and on budget although, ironically, central government, rather than Livingstone, has driven the project through.

The Scottish parliament
Bearing in mind the controversy over its spiralling cost, you might expect Scotland's first parliament for 300 years to be a pretty spectacular affair. And although Enric Miralles' £200m-plus opus does signify the Scots' desire for a symbol of post-devolutionary intent, the design goes for a low-key approach to democracy.

Instead of opting for a large single building, Miralles has assembled a series of cantilevered masses that seem to grow out of Holyrood Park. It is a collection of glass-roofed fragments that have been compared to upturned boats.

Before his death last year, Miralles explained that the shapes drew their inspiration from the mountainous landscape that cradles Edinburgh. This has been criticised as a failure to engage with the buildings that sit around it, but Miralles' poetic approach signifies an architecture that reaches for a more mythic understanding of the country and its politics.

The spiralling cost might say something about Scottish politicians' inexperience of procurement but the impressive building slowly emerging at Holyrood also speaks volumes of their fierce pride.

The Welsh assembly
Richard Rogers' National Assembly for Wales was supposed to serve as a symbol of the principality's new-found self-confidence; instead, the architect's sacking last week may make it a monument to political cowardice.

Roger's design – which may yet be built without the architect's involvement – was intended to symbolise democratic transparency and political accessibility. It had an elevated canopy covering a vast civic square, from which the public could watch debate in the chambers below.

But as projected costs spiralled from £27m to £47m, nervous assembly members cited the need to protect the public purse and axed Rogers – who responded that he was being made a scapegoat for politicians' failure to manage the project.

Edwina Hart, the assembly's finance minister, suggested that the building could go ahead as a PFI project, saying: "We want a visionary building; something which is symbolic of the new Wales."

Critics have pointed out that visionary buildings require visionary politicians to get them built. The project's symbolic status seems assured, but for the wrong reasons.