Every regional town and city in New South Wales is shaped by a familiar set of civic buildings — post offices, schools, town halls, police stations, and sometimes swimming pools. Most of these structures were designed by the NSW Government Architect’s Office between 1958 and 1988, resulting in a vast yet understated body of public architecture that is both uniform and locally specific.

Because these buildings are embedded in everyday routines, they often go unnoticed and are rarely considered as significant architectural works. Yet together they form a coherent landscape of civic design that quietly defines the state.

Regional Bureaucracy, led by architect and academic Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal with photographer Hamish McIntosh and a group of contributors, revisits this overlooked archive through new photographs, drawings and texts. Rather than offering a complete history or definitive account of the Government Architect’s Office, the book presents selected examples as fragments of a broader system.

The result is a looser, interpretative reading of public architecture — one that resists totalising narratives and instead highlights the ordinary, functional and “good enough” nature of these buildings. It invites readers to reconsider the aesthetic and cultural value of the spaces that structure everyday life, and perhaps to see them anew in person.