Agricultural Zone - Pierre Janin

Bonneval-sur-Arc, France

The Bonneval Sur Arc’s agricultural zone brings together nine livestock buildings. It was built as a local government project for farmers to support agriculture in the high mountains.

The aim of the project was to construct a communal agricultural extension to the existing village. Each building has an individual courtyard with an access ramp to the zone’s shared barns, opening onto the central street and linking them.

A concrete ground floor houses the farm animals with manure pits below. The shared barns above are built from locally sourced timber. Goats can graze on the planted roofs. A nine-meter-high earth wall at the rear of the buildings protects the site from potential avalanches in the mountains above. This project, built on a fragile site, brings landscape and architecture together and creates a place conducive to animal welfare, where farmers can work together and alongside each other.