Light habitat: a fairy tale too good to be true?
Light habitat: a fairy tale too good to be true?Reporterre - 21 Sep 2022
Stay or go? This is the response expected by a couple in Brittany, who have built a straw-earth house.
On trial on September 19, he will be fixed on his fate on October 3. A case illustrating the complexity that surrounds light habitats.
With its mud-straw walls and rounded shapes, Amalia and Harald's home looks like a hobbit's house, straight out of a movie. Nestled in an old quarry, the house overlooks a little corner of paradise where goats, geese, chickens and dogs live together freely. Protected from animals by a fence, a space is devoted to market gardening in permaculture. Tomatoes, squash and butternut: the fairy tale continues in this vegetable garden, where everything is abundance and profusion. “It's the magic of compost made in dry toilets! jokes Amalia, picking juicy, sweet-tasting tomatoes. However, the adventure could soon stop.
On September 19, Harald and Amalia were summoned before the criminal court of Quimper: they are accused of having made arrangements on a non-constructible zone without authorization from the town hall. Their house risks being destroyed, and their beautiful project abandoned. Without a lawyer, and unprepared for the workings of justice, the couple struggled to make themselves heard during the hearing: "It was a total fiasco...", testifies Amalia on the telephone, her voice still trembling at the out of court. How did they get there? To understand, you have to go back three years.
