5th stop : Uzeste d'Audace or ways and means to live together.

In Lespiet’s neighbourhood in Uzeste, three families of friends have started a shared eco-housing project, which is motivated by cooperation. This challenge of living together was inspired by the wish to access property, have a respectful life toward the environment and develop collectives activities in a unique structure. Thus, this project was not about creating an unfettered community but rather design “a place for private life in social and environmental interaction with its territory” (quote from the presentation document of the project Uzeste d’Audace).

Since 2016, Lucile, Yannick, Mickaël, Jean-Baptiste, Oualid, Nissaf and their five children have bought an estate of three hectares. At the beginning, this one had a big building with an adjacent barn along with a farming construction. This last one was destroyed in order to build a complete new eco-house. As for the main building, it will welcome two families and is currently in the progress of renovation work by using ecological materials. The land is also endowed with a natural source, a small wood and a meadow. So favourable circumstances for an ecological transition. This metamorphose can be observed as well in the structure than in the essence of the project, which human dimension is the decisive factor of its existence.

Sharing its housing in an ecological way embodies an attractive alternative when it has become essential to take its precautions with the capitalist era’s downward spiral. This project results from several assessments. First of all, the individual access to property is currently quite a feat when, alongside, conventional construction is falling apart – just like our link with nature. Second of all, the lack of social connection and the need to take solidarity and mutual assistance values up again. So our six characters have decided to follow different path to realise their aim.

The merging purchase gave birth to an estate cooperative society. Living collectively enable the reducing of economics costs and ecological consequences related to human existence, such as rubbish processing and the recycling or by the common management of the energy.

Beyond the daily habits, the inhabitants focus their ecological attention on the way they conceive their housing by analysing its potential impacts on nature. To make this study, they call for a craftsman specialist of the bio-construction.

Give a farmer the access to a land to set up an organic tiny-farm is another goal of this project. The farmer commits himself not to use oil in his activity. Around the small wood, he made dig a pond together with a canal to drive rainwater. Thus, balance is maintained between garden and trees’ irrigation.

The last part of this shared eco-housing is the collective house. This third building is designed in cooperation with the social entourage, which one could grab it to organise cultural, ecological and economic actions. Provided with a coworking space, it will welcome associations and economics activities involved toward environment. Even the construction of this house will be carrying handover and swap values. Indeed, the inhabitants want to collaborate with a construction school in order to make of this house a practical case, an experimentation of eco-construction learning as much as a social rehabilitation springboard. This project should play a key role in the social and solidarity economy of the region.

The project is based on commons values that give its reason for being while insuring its realisation and its durability:

Respect of the environment just as the design and the construction of the housing as in the behaviour of its inhabitants;
Solidarity and cooperation;
Knowledge and skill handover by putting professional through to young graduated. Besides, a craftsman supervises the collectives constructions works. He shares his knowledge with the volunteers during theoretical mornings.

That’s where we appear on stage… It is the 12th of March 2018, it’s 7 pm and we tread for the first time the muddy ground (it’s raining continuously for weeks) of Uzeste d’Audace’s property. We park the truck and look around us. Far away, there is a light emanating from a window so we come closer. In the darkness, we perceive mobiles homes, minivan and trailer. The land is slightly going down and we end up in the middle of garden’s tables and chairs. The door-window is now really close. We move until the threshold and the handle is barely pulled that the wood stove and cooker’s heat are wrapping around us. A nice smell is getting out of the hoven. Six new people are facing us smiling. Those are the others volunteers. that are greeting us. And here we are involved in a straw-and-earth coating work within a shared housing project.

Every week is planed about four working days and one theoretical morning. Thomas, the eco-construction craftsman, oversees everything. We have mainly operated in the stone’s house, the one that will receive two families.

The coating that we used had a double function:

protect the inside insolation made with compact straw in a wood structure and put against the stone’s walls;
be a shelf for the finishing coating.

We have placed the main coating layer either directly on the stone’s wall or on a first layer already put.

Process of the straw-and-earth coating:

The clay is the adhesive
The sand avoids cracks and reinforces matter
The straw resists to traction

The straw-and-earth is an ecological technic of construction. All the materials used are locals: the earth comes directly from the field and the straw is the product of a neighbour farmer. They both provide a good thermic insolation because they resist to the temperature’s changes by breaking the cold or the hot that enter into the house. The straw insolates by catching air and the earth absorbs energy and lets it go slowly, it has a strong inertia. Finally, earth and straw bring a good phonic insolation.

Uzeste d’Audace, an inspiring shared eco-living place

You dream about creating an eco-project to find peace inside by giving meaning to your actions. And then, you end-up into a collective working in a shared eco-living place where the governance is already well tied together. It’s the verve of this organization that you want to highlight, to note all the inside logics and give the different steps of it around you. If that can help dreamers to go for it, the Earth will harvest some seconds of respite more.

Uzeste d’Audace’s shared eco-living place is a long-term project. Take the time to live through the construction in order to fix strong bases between and around them. Since the beginning, way before the start of the concrete work, the emergence of the project went over four years with several steps.

First, the squirt of an idea happened. Share a housing and cooperate.

Then, the perspective of living in collaboration got people together. Next, the group looked for a land while thinking about the unavoidable commons principles. A large and tree-filled land with a great biodiversity. A land located in Uzeste and nowhere else.

Individuals went to progress elsewhere, others stayed and opened their ear. In the end, in listening and respect of needs and wishes of each one, a collective identity appeared. A general ethic came out. And the futures inhabitants wrote their project so that it can clearly appear. So that it can be spread at the different interlocutors.

And finally, occurred the turning point. The year you bought your own land. This year, everything went very fast. You all agreed on the legal form to give to your project: a SCI with variable funding. A moral entity to allow individuals to sell back their parts at anytime. A structure to avoid land conjecture. You turned yourself to the At’coop association, which brings you its knowledge in cooperative housing project.

You multiplied meetings which rhythm became weekly. We must say that there was so many things to achieve: the writing of the SCI’s statutes, the SCI’s creation, the charter’s foundation in which you had to consider every possibility. Even if you share an ancient friendship, proximity can change the deepest humans connections. By the way, it’s by taking care of the human matter and all the complexity humans can involve, that you search for specifics tools to learn how to balance your life together.

That’s why you took a Nonviolent Communication course;

That’s why you get yourself together weekly to talk about your priority, to warn the others about casual outside agendas and to share the main tasks between you all;

That’s why you organize monthly a full-day meeting that takes place outside the land with a mediator. This gathering is a release; it allows you to express frustrations and fears as much as the pleasures.

It neutralises conflicts and comforts you. It is a revitalising and refocusing time for each one of you. A time to remind yourself of taking care of everyone’s personals areas.

Area n°1 – the relation with the inner self

Area n°2 – the couple

Area n°3 – the family

Area n°4 – the inhabitants’ link

Area n°5 – the connection with the temporary involved persons and the outside world.

Each zone matters and deserves a watchful eye to reach a blooming society.

With Uzeste d’Audace, the time spent to elaborate the project has borne fruits since today it is in full growing thanks to the help of hundreds of volunteers and the support of local and regional politics. This three weeks experience among the inhabitants highlights the importance of the coherence between words and actions when you carry out of a cooperative project.