• A modern project is a project where you don’t have to queue (Paris, 10th february 2007)

• When I look at my office, I can see leatherette, stainless steel, laminate, aluminium, glass, concrete, plasterboards, galvanised steel, white painting, glued laminated timber (glulam), a wool carpet, plastic... and I am unable to tell the origin of the raw materials, or where they were transformed : I am a foreigner in my office.

• I would like a candidate to write a work on the complete traceability of construction products and their places of transformation.

• In 2006, I received a greetings card where appeared a map with the mention “remarkable built face†. Until the 20th century, efforts in architectural realization were almost each time crowned with success and the results became remarkable constructions, whether they were places of power (political or religious), or places of production or habitat (rural or urban).

With the 21st century, the situation is quite different : efforts (in terms of time spent on a project) do not any more imply an architecture of quality : why? But what is an effort? What is an architecture of quality?