Rehabilitation and extension of the Ferme du Breuil
After nearly thirty months of construction, ACAU Architectes and the entire design team are pleased to deliver the rehabilitation and extension of Ferme du Breuil.
Ferme du Breuil carries a history deeply rooted in the agricultural landscape and in the development of the town of Mézidon Vallée d’Auge. Dating from the late eighteenth century, it once formed part of a vast estate organized around Château du Breuil, now the town hall. Located at the edge of the wooded park and the site’s wet meadows, the farm was a structuring agricultural ensemble within the territory, tied to the cultivation of the lands of the Pays d’Auge. Composed of Caen stone buildings, walls, annexes, a pond, and a dovecote, it embodied a sober and robust rural architecture shaped by agricultural uses and Norman construction know-how. Over time, and with the evolution of farming practices, the site gradually lost its original function.
Long left in the background, almost silent at the heart of the town, Ferme du Breuil became a familiar yet unoccupied presence, a fragment of collective memory. By becoming a place dedicated to culture, childhood, and transmission, it preserves its original vocation as a shared and inhabited place while entering a new contemporary temporality.
The strength of the site, but also its fragility, lay in the fact that it had remained in its original condition since the end of farming activity, leading to severe structural pathologies that required urgent intervention. A long diagnostic phase made it possible to reveal, preserve, and justify the choices guiding a project that combines restoration, reconstruction, and extension.
More than a heritage rehabilitation, the intervention sought to extend the history of the site without ever freezing it. The existing fabric is neither sanctified nor imitated; instead, it becomes the support for a new architectural narrative. The original buildings, characteristic of the Pays d’Auge with their Caen stone gables, required profound restructuring and, in some cases, reconstruction. Floors and structures were entirely rethought in order to accommodate contemporary uses. This new structure is deliberately left visible within the interior spaces and enters into dialogue with the existing fabric without resorting to pastiche.
The extensions, designed as single-storey volumes, are inserted with restraint into the farm landscape. Their materiality derives directly from the site itself: a cast concrete made with recycled aggregates and incorporating stones from the demolished former annexes. This process required genuine craftsmanship in order to achieve an irregular surface analogous to the existing stone masonry. In this way, the site concrete establishes a discreet dialogue with the existing limestone. Yet far from seeking imitation, the project asserts a clear contemporary language in which each period remains legible and identifiable.
Reuse becomes more than a technical gesture: it becomes a way of transmitting the material memory of the site. Glazed links and circulation spaces allow the extensions to step back respectfully from the existing buildings, while maintaining a constant relationship with the landscape and the built heritage.
All the existing buildings were insulated with lime-hemp concrete in order to preserve the hygrometric and breathable qualities of the Caen stone. Inside, materials remain raw and essential: natural wood, mineral renders, board-formed concrete, and exposed wall thicknesses. Between interior and exterior, the project multiplies transparencies and thresholds, creating an almost sensory sequence.
Immersed in the heart of a vast green lung, the project asserts a strong environmental dimension. The landscaped park, swales, and natural spaces were designed with respect for the existing fauna and flora. Architecture and landscape were conceived together as one and the same experience of place.
Ferme du Breuil thus proposes an architecture deeply rooted in the landscape, where the project is composed through an alternation of solids and voids, masses and transparencies. Site-cast concrete, mixed with stones from the demolitions, is not used as a standardized material but as a contextualized one, embodying thermal inertia, durability, and reuse. This approach seeks a form of essential economy: building less through the addition of systems, and more through constructive precision, making mass, material, and durability a contemporary response to environmental challenges.
