In Normandy, Anatomies D'Architecture renovates a rural house using 100 percent local materials.

Anatomies d'Architecture, an architecture firm based in Paris and Marseille, has renovated a rural house in Sap-en-Auge, Normandy, France using 100 per cent local materials. The 83-square-meter house, named Le Costil, was renovated with an ecological construction approach that used entirely local materials and traditional craftsmanship.

The studio's renovation of a traditional brick house, or longère, includes only natural materials from within a radius of 100 km. The design process aimed to answer the question, "How can we change the way we build our homes?"

"In other words, we must learn how to reconnect our habitat to its territory, understanding and respecting its particularities and resources: climate, geography, history, built heritage, local materials, and regional building techniques. 

"And how can we take advantage of this recontextualization to provide an architectural response to the ecological challenges of the Anthropocene epoch?".

The house was renovated using hemp insulation, raw earth coatings, timber frames made of local chestnut and oak trees, reuse of traditional bricks and recycled corks. Foundations are made of locust tree trunks and floors are made of reused wood windows.

The studio explained that the renovation of the house took two years as they tried to figure out alternative and local solutions to conventional buildings.

The studio said that this project was only made possible thanks to the hard-working people of Normandy who fight every day to preserve local and traditional craftsmanship, ancestral practice, regional solidarity, and short circuits. The two-storey house consists of a kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom on the ground floor, while a mezzanine floor is dedicated to a study room, bathroom, and an open hall.