French vernacular heritage to inspire a new sustainable architecture

We are nowadays facing a situation of crisis for which we urgently need to find solutions. Better than trying to invent them, we should search them at the sources, considering that many of them exist already. Vernacular habitats reveal exemplary strategies in terms of sustainability. There is no better evidence of sustainability than those habitats that have actually lasted for a long time thanks to their capacity of adaptation to local conditions, developed and transferred over the centuries. The present article is part of the VerSus project, which intends to show that we should learn from vernacular heritage in order to build in a sustainable manner today. This article attempts to demonstrate the validity of French vernacular solutions for the reinterpretation of a new vision for contemporary architecture through two case studies.