Edmond Lay’s naturalist houses, modernology of an environnemental architecture Les maisons naturalistes d'Edmond Lay, modernologie d'une architecture environnementale

This work follows the mother lode of single-family houses designed by French neo-Wrightian architects in the second half of the 20 th century. Pencil in hand, the investigation starts on the hillsides bordering the Adour plain, in the family house of architect Edmond Lay, which he built partly with his own hands. After encountering Wright and his architecture during a trip to the United States from 1958 to 1962, he moved “back home” and built some twenty single-family houses in the tradition of organic architecture. In 1978, he was commissioned by a young couple to build a vessel of stone and wood, alongside a team of skilled craftsmen, in a meadow in the southwest of France at the foot of the Pyrenees: the Auriol house. The meticulous modernology of these two projects carefully reconstructs their morphogenesis. This in-depth knowledge of these homes is then compared to the practices of Edmond Lay’s neo-Wrightian French colleagues, in order to explore the specificity of his architectural means and objectives. The aim is to draw Edmond Lay’s unique and circumstantial ethos from the intrinsic characteristics of his domestic spatial production. The resulting fusionist environmental aesthetic sparks the metamorphosis of our relationship with various milieux. While this “organic” movement has been neglected by historiography, it opens up gaps in our insensitivity to the surrounding world. This aest·ethic, however, is not a pointless artistic exercise, nor does it stand in opposition to the more materialistic ecological criticisms of sustainable constructive morals. Moving beyond the futile contrast between art and technique, Edmond Lay’s architecture is a relevant source of inspiration for addressing contemporary challenges.