Now what do we do? With the turn of a new year, Ed Feiner, boots and all, has left the General Services Administration. The fact that another public servant has left the world’s most prodigious bureaucracy and joined the private sector would not normally set off alarms. However, Feiner made a tremendous difference. As chief architect for the nation’s largest landlord, he oversaw the establishment of the Design Excellence Program, now in its 10th year, perhaps the most comprehensive and beneficial federal program for architecture since the New Deal.

What has Design Excellence accomplished? Its goals are lofty ones. The program represents a statement by government, backed up by investment, that design matters. At its core are principles articulated by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who saw our buildings and public spaces as collective expressions of our democracy. Clarity and a contemporaneous statement of public nobility were its hallmarks.