454 www.ijissh.org | Int J Innov Stud Sociol Humanities | Volume 8, Issue 1, 2023 INTRODUCTION Building in the 21 st century has never been like before where architectural and building designing nowadays introduced the environmental / ecological parameter as a centerpiece and fundamental component to the designing processto face the fallouts and consequences of pollution and global warming, this initiative was even included and imposed throughout legislative texts and laws in many countries, and it evolved with time. Rural dwellings provide a nice example of exploiting the eco-concept, those houses should be planned and built-in accordance with eco building standards to meet the demands of their residents and provide them with a suitable place to live and have a low ecological impact on its environment in the same time. The building design in France is subjected to laws and regulations, most importantly the environmental regulations, many policies were taken, starting with The Environmental Forum in 2007the thermal regulation in 2012, and the most recent one : The Environmental Regulations For New Buildings was published in 2020 which is a French guide explaining and detailing the environmentalsettings and sustainable development criteria which should be included and used in order to create ecofriendly and sustainable buildings. For the Algerian case designing and building rural dwellings follows law texts and regulations in order to obtain a construction permit,with the presence of laws defining eco criteria to be taken into consideration (Largat, Farid et Chettah, 2022), however most of the resulting houses in the region of Tébessa from a preliminary sight do not reflect an image of a house build according to sustainability standards, they testify to some poor craftsmanship, the interior do not meet the technical, environmental, or sanitary criteria. International Journal of Innovative Studies in Sociology and Humanities ISSN 2456-4931 | Open Access | Volume 8, Issue 1, 2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.20431/2456-4931.080149 Environmental Quality in Rural Dwellings: Case of Tébessa’s Region Abderrahmane Tahar Amine 1 , Adad Mohamed Cherif 2 1 Ph.D. student, Laboratory for the Evaluation of the Quality of Use in Architecture and the Built Environment (LEQUA- REB), Department of Architecture, Larbi Ben M’hidi University of Oum El Bouaghi, 04000 Algeria. 2 Professor, Department of Architecture, Larbi Ben M’hidi University of Oum El Bouaghi, 04000 Algeria. This research paper aims to find the main causesthat led to the creation of countryside dwellingsin the Region of Tébessa that are not reflecting an image of a houses build according to sustainability standards, unlike rural contemporary French countryside dwellings,the research was based on-site investigations:General and specific observations, assessments of building construction technics, design criteria, and architectural configuration, field visits, and interviews with various building actors, also bycomparing with some existing Frenchcountryside dwellingsand also through thecomparison of the Algerian construction regulations with the French Environmental Regulations for New Buildings 2020, A critical interpretation was performed, and it has been discovered that the designing of the rural dwellings built in the region of Tébessa excluded the eco phase depending on the decree 15- 19 which controls the modalities of obtaining a construction permit and the same time rule out the application of the regulations and policieson energy regulation, indoor environmental quality, and thermal guidelines which have already been released.The objectives of building’s sustainability were overcome trough the eco-design concepts, the reduced impact on the surrounding environment and life quality of indoor spaces, The French legislator injected and confirmed the eco parameters directly through the environmental regulation of 2020 however in the Algerian case this step was not taken into consideration where the decree defining the construction permit did not call upon the existing environmental texts and regulations. Key words: Rural houses – sustainability–- environmental quality –building regulations–eco design. Abstract Received: January 02, 2023 Accepted: January 25, 2023 Published: January 28, 2023