Through the simple intervention of four stepped concrete masonry unit walls arrayed at an angle in glazed shades of beige and brown, one of those murky, back-of-house service corridors is transformed into five front-of-house exhibition spaces. The historical references are obvious—Herman Hertzberger, Aldo Rossi—but particularly impressive are the ways in which Paul or Paul’s Five Rooms engages with competing public aesthetics. The materials, colors, and scale pay tribute to generic architectural qualities found in municipal buildings anywhere—American community swimming pools, Dutch office buildings, Australian public schools. Abstraction, solidity, and polish combine to provide a literal and polemical counterweight to the lavishly detailed surfaces of the Cultural Center’s upper-level foyers and halls. Here, two versions of civic architecture are pitched against each other—the utilitarian versus the decorative—raising broader conceptual questions about the present state of public buildings. With their installation doubling as interior rehab, Paul or Paul demonstrates that monumentality can be its own public service. Come for the show, stay for the schvitz.