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Hear the smallest breeze rustling the leaves revealing a timber house with a somewhat sleepy nature, slowly settling down and aging with its newfound surroundings. It’s enchanting, and you cannot take your eyes away from it – for a small movement could disturb resting structure and make it sprint further into the forest.

Located in Montlouis-sur-Loire France, around the forest in Bouurdisiere Castle estate, this slumbering being is Local and Suphasidh’s collaborative 100% Wood House (or Maison 100% Bois), who are also the clients. The house was first conceived for the Castle’s second edition of the Forest and Wood Festival in 2017, under the architectural brief that required the structure to be made solely of wood and connect the historical site with contemporary times. This though challenge paved the confronting process of reshaping the design approach and perception of a home that led to the team taking out the first place at the competition.

Related: MUT Design’s Pavilion for World Design Capital Valencia Honours Traditional Crafts.

The approach to the brief for the 100% Wood House began with uniting a timeless material with advanced technological construction. From the frame to the structural columns, to the platforms and façade, pieces were carefully prepared locally off-site before being seamlessly assembled onsite. Timber planks were digitally cut before lining the façade walls, and chestnut trunks that inform the charming column structures were prepared in a sawmill ten kilometres away before being installed on site. All of these were also purposely left untreated, adding another layer of life and narrative to the patchwork of different timber textures.

Internally, the two-storey house approximates 42 square metres. The architects took care in breaking down programs that would allow linearity and flexibility within the functionality of the architecture. The simple strategy reveals the design of a central wet area core with a continuous platform spirally wrapped around. The platform that forms the storeys resembles a split Mobius-strip ramp, generous in space to allow fluidity in organising sleeping and entertainment spaces. It is only the ground floor – with the central bathroom and kitchen counter and sink anchored to the edge of the ground floor remains permanent.

The form addresses the “time of standardized dwellings, (and focus on) the importance of interactions between the inhabitant and his build environment”. From afar, 100% Wood House is like a sculpture with a caramel coloured ribbon gracefully wrapped with openings. Each opening from the ribbon windows offers a post-impressionist vibe of the forest, yet offering privacy where needed. As the façade encapsulates the platform, where it follows the rise also reveals a void, providing a terrace and additional shade and insulation created from the internal platforms.

With pockets big and small to enjoy planning your own space while being protected by elm-coloured trees, 100% Wood House is a beautifully planned home that leaves no wasted opportunity to take your breath away.

| The article 100% Wood House in Amboise, France by Local & Suphasidh. appeared first on Yellowtrace. |

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“The most important challenges of cooperation might be the most difficult to benchmark; they involve creatively stepping out of our habitual roles to change the ‘game’ itself. Indeed, if we are to take the social nature of intelligence seriously, we need to move from individual objectives to the shared, poorly defined ways humans solve social problems: creating language, norms and institutions.”

- Cooperative AI: machines must learn to find common ground (Via Matt Jones)

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“An AI, and others, would benefit from improved communication skill and infrastructure. Will the AI understand the wave of a police officer, indicating that the officer wants the AI to go through an intersection? Can it express to other vehicles that the reason it is idling in a narrow parking lot is to wait for a car up ahead to pull out? Can it accurately, precisely, and urgently express a sudden observation of dangerous road debris to (AI) drivers behind it? Can it communicate sufficiently with another brand of driver AI to achieve the subtle coordination required to safely convoy in close proximity?”

- Open Problems in Cooperative AI

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“We designed tools and frameworks to help us see the world in new ways, but they also changed how we think. We shaped frameworks, and in turn they shaped us. 20th century approaches like design thinking, human-centered design, and jobs to be done too often look at people solely as individuals. Or, worse yet, only as consumers. They don’t consider people in relation to their communities or to wider society. And society itself is ignored by design.”

Society Centered Design

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“What’s the future of interaction design?” — Chris Downs

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“What if new technologies could help us embrace nature’s diversity and complexity, instead of simplifying it? If breeders could unlock the genetic diversity of the 30,000 edible plant species that exist worldwide, they might be able to identify plant species and varieties that would be resilient and productive under the pressure of climate change. If growers could understand how each and every plant on their farm is growing and interacting with its environment, they could reduce the use of fertilizer, chemicals, and precious resources like water, and explore sophisticated growing techniques like intercropping and cover cropping that restore soil fertility and increase productivity.”

Project Mineral is using breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, sensors, and robotics to find ways to grow more food, more sustainably

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“Ideas by definition are always fragile. If they were resolved, they wouldn’t be ideas. They’d be products ready to ship. I’ve come to learn you have to make an extraordinary effort not to focus on the problems which are implicated with the new idea. These problems are known, they are quantifiable, understood. But you have to focus on the actual idea, which is partial, tentative and unproven. If you don’t actively suspend your disbelief, if you don’t believe there is a solution to the problems, of course you will lose faith in your ideas. That is why criticism and focusing on the problems can be so damaging, particularly in the absence of a constructive idea. Remember, opinions are not ideas, opinions are not as important as ideas, opinions are just…. opinions.”

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Chobani’s society centred vision of the future is really something I can get behind. More heartfelt and humane than any inadvertently dystopian vision film created by the big tech companies. Lovely.

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Budapest, Hungary photographed at night from the International Space Station. Amid the lights of the capital city is the dark void of the Danube, Europe’s second-longest river. Budapest’s metropolitan area spans 2,944 square miles (7,626 square km) and houses roughly 3.3 million people — one-third of Hungary’s total population.

See more here: https://bit.ly/2Ss4296

47.492500°, 19.051389°

Source imagery: NASA

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Santorini, officially known as Thira, is a Greek island in the southern Aegean Sea. It is known for its beautiful scenery and traditional architecture — low-lying cubical houses made of stone, often whitewashed to reflect the hot mediterranean sun. Santorini’s primary industry is tourism, welcoming about 2 million visitors every year. This Overview also shows Therasia, Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni, and Aspronisi, four smaller islands included in the municipality of Santorini.

See more here: https://bit.ly/3oHSFGk

36.416667°, 25.433333°

Source imagery: Maxar