Managing forest for the world it becomes
I work independently, across the whole process — forest management, felling, every stage of timber transformation, and sale. The goal is not short-term extraction, but ensuring that forests remain living, resilient ecosystems capable of supporting future generations despite existential obstacles: climate change, increasing human pressure, and the persistent belief that incremental adjustments will be enough.
Beyond declared certification schemes, my team developed Bois Suivis — literally, "tracked timber" — a field-verification protocol that lets a wood's end user check, on the ground, that stated forestry practices were actually followed. It's built to be checked, not just declared: a concrete proposal for keeping this world habitable for the people who'll live in it after us.
Felling and skidding, hands-on
I fell and extract the timber myself — it keeps me in direct feedback with the rest of the chain. What a tree does in the forest, on the workshop floor, and on a real construction site all shape each other, within the same workflow — not just on paper.
Twelve years ago, I built my own skidding vehicle from a repurposed 4x4 fire-service truck chassis — new bodywork, crane installation, structural welding and calculations, taken through individual type-approval for road use. This original forestry machine lets me control the quality of the work on site directly, and adapt harvesting methods to each site's conditions.
Round, curved timber structures, drawn to fit the site
I design custom timber buildings from real trunks — round, naturally curved — fitted to each client's brief and often to an existing building I need to design around. Robotic shaping (stage four) makes this kind of natural, non-standard geometry buildable at a fraction of the previous cost.
I draw in Rhino 3D, then bring the proposal to life in TwinMotion — compositing the new structure into a photogrammetry scan of the existing site — for near-photorealistic renders that clients can already picture themselves in. It materially shortens the distance between a proposal and a signed quote.
Toolpaths that follow the tree, not the other way around
In collaboration with my mentor Ludovic Mallegol, I develop parametric workflows that generate cutting toolpaths for a seven-axis robot. The work is carried out at La Manufacture du Châtaignier — the wood fabrication workshop of Coop Monts et Barrages, an emerging innovation cluster based on a working farm.
The aim: let the robot adapt to the tree's actual curvature, rather than forcing the natural shape into a standard, rectilinear beam — carrying forward the genius of the living world. After two years of development, we're beginning to publish our results: "The tree dictates the shape: reversing the industrial paradigm in rural areas", in Construction Robotics (Springer).
And production is under way :
From foundation to finished frame
I install the finished structures myself on client sites — from site preparation and foundations to the final timber frame assembly — combining traditional timber craftsmanship with the precision of robotic fabrication. Trees can remain standing for decades, sometimes centuries — the very same level of structural stability we expect from a building. They are, in fact, a powerful source of inspiration.
