| dc.description | Last spring, I spent a few months in Brittany. I went to play boulioù (a local boule game) with the town’s elders when they started sharing their regret of no longer speaking their mother tongue: Breton. I found this testimony touching and absurd: to think that in just 50 years, the language that everyone spoke was forgotten by all.
I have always been interested in this ancient language. It was the mother tongue of my grandparents, the one they used every day, the one my mom understood but never learned, the one I only heard a few times during meetings with elders. The one future generations probably will never hear.
In Brittany, vernacular architecture has origins as old as the spoken language: the long house. It is a house typology where man and animals have coexisted for centuries. The typology has been extended over time depending on the need. It can sometimes reach more than 60 meters in length but never overpass eight meters in depth. With the industrialisation and economic development of the countryside, the Bretons simultaneously abandoned their language and houses. As a symbol
of social elevation, people started speaking French and built new modern homes, often next to the old vernacular structure. In this context, I wanted to understand the architecture of the longhouse and its language.
I started by focusing on a restricted geographical area: the municipality of Languidic. Located in southern Brittany, it is large enough to have a wide range of longhouses. I identified all the longhouses in the area and selected twelve for further analysis. From there, I ocused on the notable elements of the facade: windows, doors, chimneys, stone walls, and the visible layers of history.
I wanted to explore the longhouse as a whole, equitably examining each era that marks the building. New materials and solutions always meet new needs, something recent renovations tend to erase for the sake of a nostalgic view of the past. To practice and test my vocabulary of the long house, I chose a case study: the long house of Kerbléhan. Located on the west side of the town’s centre, it has not
experienced any major changes and remains in rather good condition despite not being inhabited since the 1970s. | en_US |
