How do you square the circle of fighting global evil while still looking good? That was the tall order that the city set for Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, the firm chosen to design its new Office of Emergency Management. The result of the architects’ labors can now be seen, and judged, at 165 Cadman Plaza East, in downtown Brooklyn. Built with part of the $20 billion in federal aid that the city received after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, this structure is the OEM’s first permanent home since the destruction of the World Trade Center, in which it took up residence in 1996. During the interim the OEM made do with digs at Pier 92 on Manhattan’s West Side and at 11 Water St. in DUMBO.

The new building is part of the extensive renovation in recent years of Cadman Plaza, the civic heart of Brooklyn: first with the restoration of its landmarked General Post Office, followed by the opening last year of the Federal Building Courthouse, designed by César Pelli, and now by the deconstructed box that houses the OEM.

Civic centers throughout America have always demonstrated a marked predilection for limestone facing, especially in their government buildings. In this regard the OEM, like Mr. Pelli’s new courthouse, does not disappoint. However much its modernist vocabulary might distinguish it from many of its neighbors, the building has a consoling conservatism to its lithic pallor. Although the relative complexity of its façade suggests that this is not your grandfather’s municipal architecture, that complexity politely resolves itself at last within the structure as a whole.

Surrounded by the greenery of the park and separated from it by a modest forecourt, the building rises up four stories in a cubic, rectilinear mass whose pale façade frames an inset section, one half of which consists of pillared curtain walls behind a metalic scrim, the other a zone of windowless black facing. Seen in profile, the façade seems detached from the rest of the building through a narrow strip of black cladding, followed by large zones of limestone and ribbon windows that extend to the back of the building.

The resulting structure manages to be fairly pleasant to the eye and up-to-date, while also fitting inconspicuously into its context. Indeed, it seems an unusually welcoming and pleasant pile, when you consider its dire functions. You feel as if you can look into it, but that you see nothing. And yet, according to a City Hall press release, this is the building in which “Watch Command personnel maintain direct communication with surrounding jurisdictions and the New York State Emergency Management Office, as well as monitor radio frequencies and dispatch systems for the New York City Police and Fire Departments, and 911 calls. Newscasts from cable and satellite TV are constantly monitored to stay aware of what is being reported locally, nationally and internationally. Additionally, Watch Command tracks New York City weather conditions through the National Weather Service.”

Part of its modest architectural success can be attributed to its development under the auspices of the Department of Design + Construction, whose cutting-edge credentials are validated by its use of the plus sign in its name. This is the organization that in recent years has brought us Arquitectonica’s distinguished work on the Bronx Museum of the Arts, which opened last October, as well as the New York Hall of Sciences in Queens, designed by Todd Schliemann of Polshek Partnership, and in Manhattan, the highly successful fountain in Columbus Circle.

Aside from these projects, the general tone of the DDC’s commissions has consisted of a fairly conservative assimilation of once radical ideas into the urban fabric. Its latest project, the OEM, would seem to fit the mold. Without being brilliant, it is about as good as we could expect for a building of this sort.

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Speaking of Brooklyn and Polshek Partnership: This past weekend saw the opening of the Brooklyn Museum new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The architect in charge was Susan T. Rodriguez, a design principal at Polshek. The main event and, architecturally, just about the only event, was a large space designed to house that now iconic work, “The Dinner Party,” by famed feminist sculptor Judy Chicago. Like the sculpture itself, the center is triangular, with canted walls and a plain concrete floor. Except for the glowing red corners where the walls meet, the space is darkened throughout, with track lights suspended like fireflies from the black ceiling that cast a shrill glow on the artwork below. Whatever one thinks of this controversial and convoluted sculpture, especially whether it deserved such a grandiloquent display, the structure that now envelops it is stylish as well as functional.

Unfortunately, it is part of the larger Sackler Wing, billed as “a museum within a museum.” That designation points to problems not only with the new wing, but with the Brooklyn Museum as a whole. Like the British Museum before the brilliant intervention of Lord Foster’s Great Court in 2000, the Brooklyn Museum is a warren that is almost impossible to navigate. It is bad enough that — despite the much ballyhooed renovation two years back — we still have to enter through the basement. As a result, once the visitors are inside, the architecture fails to do its primary job of providing them with a sense of orientation and order. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao — which is supposed to confuse you! — is serene by comparison. Seventy years ago, when you could enter by the courtyard of the McKim, Mead, and White building, the entire layout of the Brooklyn Museum was transparent. But that is no longer the case, and matters are made even worse by this new Sackler Wing. There are four ways to enter the main exhibit, and all of them seem to be by the back door. Then, just when you think the exhibition is over, it foists upon you a whole new gallery. And just when you expect that to go on, it abruptly shuts down. Into this labyrinthine mess now comes the triangular entombment of “The Dinner Party.” Aside from the fact that the artwork itself is triangular, it is hard to imagine where such a configuration could actually work architecturally. Not at the Brooklyn Museum in any case!