Mimosa, Alvalade, Sergio_Rita’s living room;
17.03.16, 12.30h

Sergio and Rita decided to live with their 2 young girls in Mimosa, a small place next to Alvalade in Alentejo.

When Sergio finished his painting studies he asked himself what was meaningful for his life.
He went deep into the question understanding that basically he needed to eat, and wanted to grow his own food, and he needed a shelter, so that he thought of building his house.
This happened in 2006, when his father bought a piece of land where they started to cultivate and where today they carry on a reforestation project, with fruit trees and the cultivation of a vegetable garden.
Doing the seasonal work to harvest fruit in France he meets Rita who also has similar ideas and looks for the same life style. They decide to start together this project; they have two children of 5 and 3 years old.
 

The house construction takes them five years.

In the beginning the project was simpler, but at a certain moment Sergio decides to build a geodesic dome with galvanized iron; a solid construction that could last a lifetime.
In the beginning it was a garden, then a green house, then their House. At first Sergio was helping his father to build his house, but then he started to need a space for his family; the house was built with the help and contribution of many friends…problems were solved as they were appearing, sometimes changing the starting project to adapt it to more secure and practical ideas.
Rita and Sergio and their two daughters have now a big kitchen living room and a mezzanine where they sleep.
Windows open like big eyes to every sun direction, so that the house can live all the day with natural light and refresh its energy.
In the sleeping room there is just a small window where sun can enter to wish a good morning, but in general it is a small cave, a twilight of intimacy.
Sergio considers that his house starts from the entrance of his land, at the doorway: he advises his smokers friends about this, as he does not want cigarettes left everywhere on the floor.
The feeling of home, for him, comes with familiarity, with the habit of living a space; when in a place he can go around with closed eyes he feels at home. But more in the specific House/Home is the physical body that we have to inhabit and care for, the rest serves to protect and preserve this body and the body of the family.
Sergio is not missing at all the life in the city. He likes to stay in the countryside. He does not like to depend on money and on the idea of always needing to have some in his pockets.
Here he feels autonomous and responsible for his life. He has to do things for himself, he gives his time for this!
I ask Sergio which sounds he remembers from the time he spent in the city, and he mentions cars and traffic that now are replaced by the birds surrounding his agriculture area, singing since the earliest morning.
When Sergio was in Lisbon he liked to spend time in the Botanic Garden of Principe Real, where he could see big trees, and in the streets he used to observe people's movement.
When Sergio moved to Lisbon to study, from the place he grew up, he remembers how shocked he was by the contrast between the people moving and passing by and the people living still in the street; he was shocked by the indifference, by the lack of connection and by the apathy that the city is able to create in people: the city, he thinks, creates a movement that makes people go without seeing.
Beside this there is something he likes of the city… he likes when he can walk as if he was a tourist, a contemplator, with disposability to discover the beauty of details created by man: Mankind is capable of the best and of the worst things.
Sergio is anyway happy for his choice; in the city, every thing comes from outside: water, energy, food…everything comes from outside and has to be paid for. Someone living in the city has to put together these two tendencies: working to pay the expenses and trying to benefit from the beauty that the city and its citizens can offer, for example in terms of cultural offers, that in the countryside is not so rich.
I ask him what he thinks about security: the feeling of security, he says, is something the can be learnt with the absence of fear, an absence connected with a confidence in life, in a mysterious order of things, and with a work on our self to impede fear settling in.
To feel and to look for security within ourself is an important work to do and if we feel afraid we have to analyze our fears to understand until what point they are real and what is their base, why they come and what is feeding them. It is important to generate love and compassion inside us and pass it to the world to make of it a better place.
What is freedom?
Freedom is responsibility for our actions and our decisions: without this…freedom does not exist !! And a prison? It can be a house, as the comfort and the wish of staying with people we love…everything is a choice!
Sergio feels that what he lives is a long-time project! A responsibility he chose to create a place where his daughters could feel well, he hopes, when they will be 30 or 40…for him this place represent his food, materials to build, wood…a domesticated nature that, he believes, will give him something back- Sergio believes in the generosity of nature! and it is now full of energy, that he wants to work on it, on its fertility…in the creation of a sort of eden…he is conscious he is creating an island, in the middle of the rest of the world.
I ask now Rita what is Casa/Home for her…she describes it as a space of comfort and a place she can organize as she wants, without obligations. Home is a comfortable place for her and her family, a place to stay and to create. House is also her body and the care of it.
For her the city now is a place to visit, where part of of her family and some few friends, she rarely meets, still live…it is also a place where often she feels alone.
What is freedom for her? For Rita freedom is peace, bread, education, health, shelter, all elements that together would permit autonomy: in today's world freedom is an endangered species. Internet lets us know everything, it is an apparent freedom killing our internal home, our memories…the knowledge old people still have, and that we, the younger generation, constantly receiving information, have almost no space anymore to keep.
Rita speaks about the importance of the autonomy of the body, of the mind; the importance of knowing how to be our own doctors, how to nourish ourselves healthy, how to build a healthy house and a healthy education; the importance of being clear, not always destracted and entertained.
My last curiosity is about their memories, the memories they keep of their first house;
Sergio lived until he was 23 in the house built, together with family members and friends, by his father; he reminds a house in constant process of building and arranging, but he also remembers a cat he was afraid of in the middle of his corridor and to wake up early, going to the sofa where he would build a hut to see cartoons draws on television feeling invisible to others' eyes!
…the house Rita shared with her mother was her mother’s house…she felt home just in her room…the day she wrote on a wardrobe and put a poster on it not to be discovered…just during the time she spent in Granada she felt for the first empty space, space to create, and cook for herself and her friends…in this moment, after five years building their house she is feeling a deep pleasure in staying inside it, writing, cooking, working, watching her daughter playing…feeling definitely home!

…to listen is to imagine…

Thank you very much Rita and Sergio for welcoming us, and sharing your time and life!

Good listening!

SPACE:

This interview recording took place in Sergio and Rita's house, sitting in the living room. The room is with many windows, with round perimeter. Walls are made of dry grass, a hearth and different small things to fill them. The roof is not too high and made of wood; the space is not too full of objects. A wooden stairway Sergio built looks like a tree and connects this downstairs space with the sleeping room mezzanine.