Upon entering, the visitor is greeted by the singing of dozens of crickets, installed in egg boxes in nurseries. Then the eye focuses on the vegetation, all kinds of herbs sprouting from the wooden countertops. The apartment, bathed in light and wrapped in sand tones, with cotton canvases drawn on the walls and seaweed on the floor, gives off a feeling of serenity. We could almost forget that it is located in the heart of Boulogne-Billancourt, in the Hauts-de-Seine. It is in this ultra-urbanized Paris suburb that Corentin de Chatelperron, 41, and Caroline Pultz, 31, set up shop to develop a “apartment of the future”that ensures a life in almost autonomy with 100% low-tech technologies, that is “useful, accessible and sustainable”.
A radical change of scenery for the couple, after four months spent alone in the Mexican desert in 2023. Nomad at heart, engineer Corentin de Chatelperron, co-founder of the Low-tech Lab association, had also lived independently in a burlap sailboat in the Bay of Bengal and a raft floating in a bay in Thailand. “But today, more than one in two human beings lives in cities, and city dwellers will represent 70% of the world’s population in 2050.”explains Caroline Pultz, designer. From July to the end of November, these eco-adventurers have set out to imagine what sustainable urban living could be like in 2040.
“We want to create a desirable new imagination, one that is neither a high-tech future around the metaverse, nor a fading flashback. “We propose another path to live better, in a healthy way and within planetary limits.”describes Corentin de Chatelperron, whose “Urban Biosphere” experiment is funded by the town hall of Boulogne-Billancourt, the National Center for Spatial Studies (CNES) and Art. In his 26 m studio2Installed in a former nursery school and donated by the municipality, the couple experiments with around twenty low-tech inventions, adaptations of technologies discovered during Corentin de Chatelperron’s world tour from 2016 to 2022.
Closed circuit water
The toilets are not dry but “live”, that is, the excrement is decomposed into fertilizer by the larvae of the black soldier fly. In the shower, a gentleman replaced the shower head. Also sprinkle oyster mushrooms, which provide a kilo of mushrooms per week. The same water, once filtered, supplies in a closed circuit the dozens of plants in the main room, grown bioponically (on the surface). These sprouts, as well as mushrooms and crickets (a departure from their vegetarian diet to avoid vitamin B12 deficiencies) make up only part of the couple’s menu. Because the duo, who do not seek self-sufficiency, also collect fruits and vegetables in exchange for half a day of work on the farm. And buy organic foods, with local foods.
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