Now the search is on to find something more congenial than its hard face - and a small square in Woden may have seen the future.

The Woden Plaza is to open to the public next week as an area of grass, both real and artificial, and a haven of seats for people to meet, greet and eat.

There'll be a play area - the play that kids do and, with a stage there, even the kind of play which dramatists write.

In architect speak, the creators say it's a "furniture installation project designed to measure the impact of user-centred activation on a thoroughfare".

In plain English, they're experimenting with Woden Square to see if similar unglamorous spaces can be brightened and revived.

What works in Woden could work elsewhere. The ACT government which is behind the project will watch with interest.

The plaza there is a product of 70s brutalism. It originally had a large pond and a fountain which was an obstacle to people crossing the square - though, apparently, kids did like paddling there in the heat.

But there wasn't much seating and in winter it seemed like the vortex of a concrete canyon. The place was a bleak wind tunnel. It was unloved.

So attempt number one was made to make it hospitable.

Around 30 years ago, architect John Easthope was brought in by the ACT authorities to redesign the square. He decided the pond had to go - but then, he said, the plan went awry.

The cause? Money and politics. "What started out to be a simple redesign turned into a nightmare," Mr Easthope says today. "Our hands were tied by money."

The problem was that the cost of getting the pond out meant there wasn't the money left to do the rest of the redesign. The planned number of seats was reduced and the square remained as a pretty bleak space that people dashed through on the way to the bus station. And the bus station was not very welcoming either.

Thirty years on, facelift number two is now trying to make the plaza friendly and attractive.

Synthetic grass has been laid and a raft of shelters and chairs and tables installed to try to attract people. There's a stage for meetings or performances. There is what the architect, Hamish Dounan, calls a library - a covered area for reading. It may even contain books. The idea is to keep it flexible so that the configuration of, for example, the children's play areas can be altered according to demand and use.

Mr Dounan, said, "The idea was to take a run-down place and design a space that would be comfortable for users."

He said there had been much consultation with local people to see what they wanted. What they said had been incorporated.

One issue was security - would the area simply become a very nice meeting place for trouble-makers and frighten others away? The architect said there would be security - lots of lighting, for example, and patrols.

So, will it work? Mr Dounan said without hesitation, "Yes. I do think it's going to work."

There is a wider issue: do we need public squares these days? Or has public space been privatised by Westfield and similar shopping centres so food courts are now what the public square once was - the meeting place, the place of rest and chatter (but under the eye of the cameras and security guards)?

Mr Dounan was adamant that we do need public spaces. "The point of a public square is that it's for everyone."

A new one is about to be added to Canberra - or, rather, an old one in its third guise. Is it third time happy?