THE SEVENTH YEAR of the first century of the third millennium (Anno Domini) saw the near-completion of four major new building projects downtown. Because Dr. Downtown handed out a “bottomless bucket” of raspberries for GTECH last year, he is going to take a leaf from the book of fisheries management and dispense only roses this year so that the raspberry crop will be able to supply what the doctor fears will be needed next year.

So this year, let’s make roses out of raspberries.

• A roseberry to Capital Center. This hybrid — the product of a sort of architectural aquaculture — reflects Dr. Downtown’s reconsideration of the impact of new buildings on the Capital Center District. GTECH, completed in 2006, continues to poke the public in the eye. As expected, the Residences at the Westin gather allure as completion nears. More surprisingly, Waterplace Towers (Co-op City) grow upon the doctor, admittedly from a very low and cheesy aesthetic gully. The impact of the four new buildings, even factoring in the execrable GTECH, isn’t fully as hideous as Dr. Downtown had expected.

From certain angles, Capital Center’s cityscapes show greater urbanity than the vacant lots that had flanked Waterplace. Yes, it is discordant in a manner typical of places that have gone in for modern architecture. That said, it offers more pleasure to the eye than most jumbles of completely unrelated buildings. It squats near the bottom of the ladder of aesthetics, atop of which are the world’s most beautiful cities, such as Paris and Rome, which rely on harmony rather than contrast for their delights. But as an aesthetic strategy it is not completely without merit. Chicago does it well; London does it poorly. Providence does it better than Hartford or Worcester. Small consolation is preferable to none.

• A rose to readers who see that the doctor has not flip-flopped. He still believes that extending the pattern of traditional styles built in the Capital Center between 1994 and 2004 (in sync with that of the city’s new riverfront) would have created a district of symphonic beauty. It would have been unique internationally — a goal abandoned by the Capital Center Commission when it embraced modernism.

• A rose to the commission for having nonetheless accidentally achieved more than it had sought — primarily because the developers of GTECH and Co-op City used architects of limited imagination. The resulting conservative modernism elicits a muted “Wow!” preferable to the hoots that would have greeted the absurd Frank “O!” Gehry starchitecture that most of the commissioners probably wanted.

• A rose to any commission member who can locate the above rose in the haystack of raspberries the commission has piled up since 2004.

• A rose to the saving grace of Providence Place, the Westin and the Marriott. The traditionally styled buildings rescue the district from total hodgepodgization, and form the essential backdrop for its aesthetic yin and yang. Their necessity was proved in 2007. Even in defeat they are victorious.

• A rose to the Procaccianti Group for its Westin tower addition, whose design, by architect Duncan Pendleberry, expands graciously upon the original neo-Victorian hotel, completed in 1994.

• A rose to the same organization for pushing to tear down the Fogarty Building on Fountain Street, whose style of modernism is not called Brutalist for nothing. Double Procaccianti’s rose for courageously reversing itself on the design for the garage/retail complex it proposes to build after the Fogarty is demolished. Originally intended to be starkly modernist, the garage was redesigned by Pendleberry in a bold traditional style, offering hope that the aesthetic direction of a mostly tedious, mid-20th-Century section of downtown will change for the better. But cut the Procaccianti’s rose in half for renovating the Dunk with a new ugliness that can’t be blamed on the bad taste of a prior generation.

• A rose to Procaccianti if its design for a future office tower to be erected on the site of the police/fire headquarters is traditional. If the design is modernist instead, turning the demolition from an opportunity into a tragedy, this rose will grow thorns.

• A rose to Sage Hospitality Resources for turning the old Masonic Temple into the Providence Renaissance Hotel, the city’s third Marriott. Twin the rose for ignoring the state’s architecture and preservation elites in their mania for a modernist addition to the temple, which nearly led to its demolition.

• A rose to the General Assembly for listening to those who, amid the fiscal crisis, pushed to save the state preservation tax credits that made the Masonic Temple and other historic renovations possible.

• A rose for the classically inspiring Rhode Island World War II Memorial, in Memorial Park.

• A rose to AS220, the arts cooperative, for restoring the Dreyfus Hotel, on Washington Street.

• A rose to the state Department of Transportation for the lovely new arched bridge, as yet nameless, that lifts Route 195 over the Providence River.

David Brussat is a member of The Journal’s editorial board ( dbrussat@projo.com).