11
Adeline and Florent Maillet left
the city to build their ideal home
in touch with nature.
‘Our life is dictated by cycles, not by speed. We
are trying to find our own rhythm. By reviving
the farm, we aim to weave a thread between the
great-grandparents and the grandchildren.’
‘When we took over our family farm about 15 years
ago, we had lived in the city for about ten years and
thought: ‘If we move out of the city, we have to build
the house we always dreamt of.’ We wanted a house
that fits into the landscape, that does not distort its
surroundings – nature, the fields. We wanted it to be
on a human scale. To us an ideal house is a simple
house. No frills. Who needs six bedrooms, four floors?
We have a wood stove that warms the body and the
heart. A home is a place where we feel free, inside and
out. We have space, we have light, we have peace. We
made sure there are large windows and lots of plants.
We feel that nature is what really decorates this house.
The light changes with the seasons. Every morning
when we get up, we always take five minutes to look
outside. We stand in front of the window and gaze out
at the trees. This view is the most beautiful screen.
Once spring arrives, we’re always outside – with
our hands in the earth, pruning trees, mowing the
lawn. In the winter, we’re indoors by the fire. During
the spring, we collect wood, which we cut for the
next winter. Slow life, slow food are trendy expressions.
For us it is not a trend. It’s our life. We plant hedges
and trees, we have animals, which are now 10 or 15
years old. The traces of our elders are visible every day,
in the landscape, in the walls that have been built, in
the shape of the plots, in the fruit trees they planted.
When choosing furniture, we like things that have
a past and evoke emotion. We like wooden furniture.
Wood comforts. We’re not interested in decoration for
decoration’s sake. We want things that are of quality,
which we can pass on to our children.’
Adeline Maillet is an interior stylist, her husband
Florent is a farmer. They live in their wooden eco-
house on their family’s farm near Lyon, France.
