In the South of France, sited on a hill of olive trees, pinus pinea, and a vineyard, a family retreat was designed with a key mission of maintaining the vitality of the site. A small agricultural plot, the site offered the possibility of amplification. With the introduction of a garden and many outdoor living spaces, the family had the intention of cultivating the landscape as part of their stewardship. In part a response to a programmatic brief, but moreover, a discursive response to architectural predicaments of geometry, typology, and anomaly, the house is also a response to Preston Scott Cohen's pedagogies on architecture.

This first monograph from New York-based Young Projects explores a new approach to spatial design that combines digital and analog methods at the intersection of exploration and architecture. This monograph introduces the cutting-edge research and work of Young Projects, founded by Bryan Young, where materiality, structure, and form intersect to generate new architectural typologies. The book presents a selection of the practice's most relevant projects: five innovative houses completed between 2015 and 2020 as well as less in-depth looks at other projects that define the practice. Each house serves as a chapter through which Young Projects' broader body of work is explored across scales, illustrated through a rich landscape of drawings, diagrams, renderings, mock-ups, prototypes, and photography. The through-line connecting all chapters is the studio's interest in using ambiguity and anomaly to create novel and accessible spaces, whether for high profile clients like Heidi Klum or a new resort in St Kitts. Young Projects seeks to draw users into immersive spatial experiences that unfold over time, in a manner that is familiar but subtly foreign. This quality of "allure" is a result of a unique and experimental approach to materiality and spatial legibility. These are the threads that tie the work together and have set Young Projects apart as an emerging practice, as well as inform the larger-scale projects the studio undertakes as it enters its second decade. Young Projects' process often begins with simple exercises in making: form-finding experiments they undertake within their Brooklyn studio. Material research has included hand-pulling plaster with an irregular knife, using furniture foam as a casting bed, and forming concrete with palm stems. These experiments, among many others, mine characteristics that are not typically associated with conventional architectural materials and break traditional methodology, allowing for qualities of randomness and spontaneity to enter the process of making. The studio finds that letting go of control (at the right moments) produces results that are often surprising, entirely bespoke, and resist replication.

The approach of "Informing Architecture by Materiality" opens the way to an innovative use of materials in the design professions. Taking material qualities and properties such as texture, elasticity, transparency and fluidity as a point of departure, the concept described and employed here transcends the conventional definitions of building materials. Instead, the focus is on a multitude of material operations, like folding and bending, carving and cutting, weaving and knitting, mirroring and screening. The featured design strategies and methods address established and "new" materials alike. They are applied both to the scale of the detail and the entire building. The examples comprise prototype structures as well as large building projects. Eight chapters deal with surfaces and layers, joints and juctions, weaving and texturing, nanoscale transformations, responsiveness, the integration of ephemeral factors like wind and light as well as material collections providing professional resources. Written by renowned experts in this field, the book features many examples from international contemporary architecture. The introductory part provides the conceptual background, while a final chapter describes consequences for pressing issues of today, like sustainability or life cycle assessment.