Rural growth strategies. The case of Duncan Lewis and Édouard François in Jupilles

Incorporating living natures as building materials by themselves has helped Duncan Lewis and Édouard François build a universe of material experimentation beyond the limits of architecture, influencing landscape issues that contribute to revealing new paths regarding the relationship between architecture, nature, and society.

Attending to the existing realities of a place serves as a starting point for them to extract the components that will later build their project. This dynamic is present in most of their works; however, I take this opportunity to highlight one of the projects where inhabiting nature and creating new links with the place are the core of the project: rural lodgings in the small town of Jupilles, France. The power of the Bercé forest on the north of the project site helps Duncan Lewis and Édouard François recognize that the rural growth of the town, which they were commissioned to design in 1996, must be an extension of the existing landscape; a project that becomes inhabited nature.

This article aims to demonstrate the possibility of proposing urban growth schemes in rural areas that respect the landscape they are inserted in without renouncing necessary progress. Duncan Lewis and Édouard François’s project responds perfectly to this need by proposing sustainable growth strategies where nature receives the prominence it deserves.