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| COMMUNITY LIFE DEV | PLANNING | COHOUSING | ARCHITECTURE | FACILITATION |
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VALLEY OAKS VILLAGE |
TWO ACRE WOOD COHOUSING |
YULUPA COHOUSING |
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COHOUSING
While a professor at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) in 1976, Michael Black had his students explore shared housing (a house shared by unrelated people) and urban, suburban and rural applications of cohousing. Michael utilized his sabbatical in 1983 to travel to Sweden, Denmark and Holland in order to study different forms of community housing utilizing shared facilities and returned with a lecture on the subject enhanced by many slide images. Since then, he has been involved in promoting, designing and creating cohousing. Whatever our ethnic background, go back far enough and we sat in groups around an outdoor fire at night with members of our tribe - our community - and told stories, celebrated our triumphs, and mourned our losses together. We are social creatures and depend on one another, not only for the necessities of keeping life going but for the more intangible need for connection. Modern life more frequently serves to separate than to bring us close. Cohousing is a modern innovation that speaks to this common need for supportive friends next door; a place to share conversation, play, work, and meals with folks both similar and different from us; and an ecologically-friendly, safe environment in which to raise children and to grow old. "Community" is a concept that produces a sense of yearning in many people these days. Michael Black is a social architect as well as a design architect and has helped to create these beautiful, friendly communities at California locations. He is currently involved in the creation of Sequoia Cohousing, a green construction, affordable, for-sale community in Sebastopol, CA and is involved with the development of two cohousing communities in the Austin, Texas area. Michael Black & Associates' services for new cohousing include: Michael has a wide range of community experiences including his involvement in a spiritual "family" since 1971; his involvement in the "circling movement," which includes facilitating large councils and the use of the "talking stick." He and his wife Alexandra lived at Two Acre Wood Cohousing since it was built in 1999 until 2005 when they moved into the new Yulupa Cohousing. See Facilitation for more on his work on process and with groups. Alexandra Hart helps with cohousing community formation. She has extensive community experience, which includes: being a founding member of the Morningstar Community; Sunshine Camp, a community where she lived with two siblings and their extended families; publishing and editing The Possible Communities Journal; being a member of the community of circles; and living and working in Two Acre Wood Cohousing and Yulupa Cohousing. She also has facilitated the "Gathering," a four-day event held by the Association of Humanistic Psychology and edited their magazine, the “AHP Perspective,” for five years. Visit the Community Life Development section for more information about Aging-in-Place and Retirement Cohousing development. |
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