L’Ermitage à Versailles has been welcoming the family of Lucie and Benoît Vignon, permanent staff and co-responsible for the site, for more than a year.
“For a long time, with Lucie, we 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 open to difference”.
For more than a year, the family has settled in an outbuilding located in the park. Life at the Hermitage has concrete advantages: savings on travel time and the possibility of living in a beautiful natural environment.
Alix (6 years old) and Gaspard (4 years old), the young children of the couple, facilitated the meetings, between games in the park and very friendly birthday parties. Benoît and Lucie have begun to forge fraternal and mutual support ties with the other residents of the Hermitage, especially during the period of confinement.
Benedict: “We came for the social dimension of the project and in this, we are rather satisfied by the experience of proximity with the residents. The confinement helped with 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 help make 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 it transforms our own relationship to ecology. Our family’s relationship to 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 really is a win/win.
The third objective, that of ensuring a presence of Fondacio 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 were happy to meet many local players”.
Lucy: “: “It was important to us to welcome people passing through at the house and this is possible. This is going very well because we have also learned to preserve our privacy and to set our limits if necessary. The novelty is that I now cultivate a personal bond with people from Fondacio with whom Benoît works on a daily basis and suddenly it brings us closer”.
This positive assessment reinforces the family’s desire to live here for at least 5 years.
