For over a year, the Hermitage in Versailles has been home to the family of Lucie and Benoît Vignon, permanent staff member and co-manager of the site.
“For a long time, Lucie and I have wanted to develop a more collective way of living, in order to live on a daily basis what we aspire to as a couple: a society of living together and openness to difference.”
For over a year, the family has been living in an outbuilding located in the park. Life at the Hermitage has concrete advantages: savings on transport times and the possibility of living in a beautiful natural environment.
Alix (6 years old) and Gaspard (4 years old), the couple's young children, facilitated meetings, between games in the park and very friendly birthday parties. Benoît and Lucie began to forge fraternal and mutual support bonds with the other residents of the Hermitage, especially during the lockdown period.
Benoît: “We came for the social dimension of the project and in this, we are rather fulfilled by the experience of proximity with the residents. The confinement helped with the meetings and the fact that Lucie does not work at Fondacio facilitates this. We are a family among others.
We also came with the desire to contribute to making things happen in terms of ecology on the site. If we have been able to contribute something since our arrival, we are also aware that this transforms our own relationship with ecology. Our family's relationship with waste and local consumption have been greatly impacted. Without our presence, perhaps the site would have been less far, but without the site, we too would have been less far in the ecological conversion. It's really a win/win situation.
The third objective, that of ensuring Fondacio's presence on the site, developing links with the neighborhood and opening up to the city is also a mutual gain. People discover the site through our personal and associative network and we have happily met many local stakeholders."
Lucie: " : "It was important to us to welcome people passing through to the house and this is possible. It is going very well because we have also learned to preserve our privacy and to set our limits if necessary. The new thing is that I now cultivate a personal bond with people from Fondacio with whom Benoît works on a daily basis and suddenly this brings us closer together."
This positive assessment confirms the family's desire to live here for at least 5 years.
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