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‘The paperless office is as useful as the paperless office’, so goes the saying. Since computers have become ubiquitous, paper consumption has actually increased. It always amazes me that banks and credit card companies have to store vast amounts of paper copies of transactions, that there is still no low cost EDI network and people still send paper invoices and purchase orders and that paper exists at all for anything other than luxury items such as books. Paper documents are often an inefficient, costly, dangerous anachronism and yet the pace of their replacement is business is seemingly glacial. Take architecture. The vast majority of litigation in architecture (and there is a vast amount of litigation – buildings are complicated and often leak etc.) stems from inconsistencies between contract documents. In the UK there are three principal documents, the plans themselves, the specifications and the bills of quantities. CAD software was…

Jeff is disappointed that the THINK proposal did not win the WTC competition. Although innovative, there are two reasons why I believe the decision may be sound: 1. the project was very ambitious structurally and could have suffered dramatically from the effects of watering down the initial idea on grounds of cost and practicality. 2. THINK is a collaboration and could have suffered the perils of committee design. A great monument needs a great artist, a single minded signature designer with the resoluteness of a Frank Lloyd Wright. Libeskind has won and although his scheme looks more conventional at first glance, his past record will stand testament that this will be a fittingly triumphant project unlike anything else in Manhattan today. This will include the first deconstructionist skyscraper.