Summer 2020
For a moment we thought something important had come to an end. Last seven years we had been putting our best intentions into the villa, then we were to leave it overnight. After we had invested so much we had to go away!? Even the Zen masters would have to breathe deeply to say: yeah, it happens to everyone. For a moment we stopped believing that we would make the world a better place, that Vila Flora didn’t have the effect we had been imagining. People went to their homes, back to little gardens, and all the carefully earned money we were giving every month for rent, water, electricity, fruit, vegetables & gas. But that wasn’t the big plan, right? What was, then, the great dream?
It appeared a long time ago & now it has appeared again. The idea that was back then born in our imaginations and now has begun to happen in reality, in a farmhouse, by a meadow, surrounded by old trees. We had been talking so much about a place where we would have space to create, where we would live together in a way that makes sense, that it must sooner or later manifest.
Summer 2012
“We will care for the landscape, build houses fitting into the natural realm, create gardens bonded to forest, where in the middle is a kindergarten – kids’ garden, close by is a school of crafts & arts, academy of knowledge & being. There is no need to write these ideas down, we share them. Nothing else makes that much sense. No other idea brings such inner motion.”
We talk about these colors and something within is dancing. Ideas jump from one to another, one finds the whole group and something twinkles in each of us, giving the possibility of a joyful life. Even beyond our lives, because we might create a place where the generations after us will dance; because we might inspire many groups & ecovillages. In fact, it’s not our idea. We are to continue on the path of the most interesting communities & philosophies, copy-paste the best including humanly mistakes, reproduce & regenerate; maybe it’s written in our DNA.
Summer 2013
“Let’s do it. There are 5 of us. Each with unique experience. We’ve got no land. We’ve got enough money for a whole month. We are unbound from business thinking. We can count, but no one has taught us to calculate. We got the idea & belief that all would manifest in a few years.”
“It will be best if we start in a place close to the city center where we will develop our activities, where we will produce & co-create, where people will meet us & our products. Soon, we will make enough money, gain valuable experience, investors, and we will buy a large plot with woods, river & hill, where we will start building houses connected to the ground or trees, creating a forest-city where people move like deer & doe, dance like fairies & elves, where children hop like squirrels & foxes. The sound of the entire city is not distinguishable from the sounds of the forest, it is in harmony with the rhythm of nature.”
“Yeah, that‘s it. So, in a few months we will open a café, in a year the villa will be a self-sufficient super house and in two years we will have 40 villas around the world.”
Nothing went as smoothly as planned. We laugh at ourselves now. But we are fine. Something happened. We were still aiming for the vision. Or rather, the vision held us. We met and were close to each other, whether we lived together or not. Something gave us the strength and desire to continue.
We were connected with the School of Modern Art, an idea of a village where everyone is both a teacher and a student. Everyone has their own craft, an art he or she teaches to others and at the same time learns other approaches and activities from others. All together, something like Paradise is born, in fact on paper, in drawings only. It has to start somewhere. Actually, we don’t have to do anything, but then it is only those dreams we didn’t know about that may come true. Fortunately, we kept talking about our desires with a lot of people:
Summer 2019
“I own a plot of land and I would like it to become a place where people live & create together, in abundance, not only material, but mainly relations, helping each other to grow. I don’t know how to put it into words, you better come. I have yurts, a meadow, big oaks & horses. Maybe you will like it there, maybe something will happen.”
A woman shared these words at a festival of self-sufficiency. In two months we had established a preparatory team, working groups, and first visions. Since then, we have been meeting in a circle every month to initiate a basement for an ecovillage community.
Meanwhile, 12 people gradually moved into houses on the land. The four-member crew of Vila Flora landed in the summer of 2020.
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