“House for Marebito” Wins the Good Design Gold Award (Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award) at the 2020 Good Design Award

“House for Marebito” is a building that attempts to update gassho-zukuri, the region’s traditional construction method, with contemporary digital technology. Aiming to recreate “architecture built with the participation of local residents,” as gassho-style houses once were, we devised a construction method using small, light parts that even children can carry. By starting from felling unused timber around the site, we also attempted to build “on almost zero-yen land with almost zero-yen materials.” The jury highly praised the project as an ambitious work presenting an entirely new form of architecture, which led to this award.
VUILD will continue working to realize a world in which anyone can take part in making things and build with their own hands.

[Jury evaluation (second screening)]
An ambitious work presenting an entirely new form of architecture: a new gassho-style lodging facility created through digital fabrication. Every step of the process, from sourcing timber from local forests, cutting it into parts and transporting them to the site, to assembling them by hand with a few people like a giant plastic model kit, circulates within a 10 km radius, achieving “micro sixth-sector industrialization.” The completed lodging is jointly owned, and part of the construction cost was raised through crowdfunding. Everything about how architecture has traditionally come into being, from how the project was launched to its financing and manufacturing process, is new. Moreover, with digital fabrication, mass production is possible simply by handing over the data. This attempt, which completely changes the way architecture has existed until now, lets us imagine the future of architecture.

Name: House for Marebito
URL: https://architects.vuild.co.jp/works/house-for-marebito/
Booking site: https://marebitonoie.studio.site/
Overview: Using digital fabrication technology, this project completes everything from timber sourcing to processing and construction within a 10 km radius, tackling the decline of forestry and the depopulation of marginal villages. By creating a “jointly owned” lodging facility from local timber in a village of about 600 people, it proposes a way of life that is “more than tourism, less than relocation,” in which people continually come and go to the mountain village as if visiting relatives.
Designers: VUILD Inc. — Koki Akiyoshi, Hayato Kurobe, Kazuya Takano, 小川幸起, Hanako Kato (architectural design) + yasuhirokaneda STRUCTURE — Yasuhiro Kaneda (structural design) + DE.Lab (environmental design)

[VUILD Inc.]
Representative: Koki Akiyoshi (CEO)
Founded: November 21, 2017
Headquarters: unico 1F-A, 3-4 Nisshin-cho, Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Business: Architectural design, development and manufacturing of wood products, sales of CNC routers, digital talent development, business development support, IT service development
URL: https://vuild.co.jp/
note: https://note.com/vuild