Good afternoon everyone,
My name is Guillaume de Montrognon de Salvert,
and I’m a member of the French nobility.
My family, our families used to live in castles.
One could say castles are the traditional homes of French nobles.
What’s the definition of a home?
It is more than just a house. A house is a box,
doors, windows, walls, a roof...
A Home is something else, it's a part of us,
of our social and psychological construction. It is the shelter of our identity.
According to the famous artist and architect Hundertwasser: "Home is our third skin".
Just like if our home was the organic extension of our body.
When I was a child, building play huts was my passion: I used carton, wood sticks, anything...
I loved the fever I felt, a fever that would last throughout my afternoons.
I remember, I wanted to take my tea in my hut, sleep in it, even live in it.
But then I grew up in condos, houses in the city,
and sometimes I even stayed in castles on holidays.
Then older I stated studying, I wanted to help agricultural development in poor countries,
because I considered it as an humanitarian action, I thought it made sense, I thought it was useful.
Me, child of a wealthy, modern, and civilized country,
was about to bring knowledge and technique to poor ignorant farmers.
When you are seventeen you aren't really serious!
After 6 years of studying, my first job took me to Peru
I started there but it didn’t work out,
I felt like a rich countries’ Gringo,
bearly knowing the local culture, making as much money as a minister…
None of this made sense.
So I decided to jump on the other side.
I left the tracks of my career...
I jumped on the other side of a life that was already planned, formatted, predetermined.
I could have been a successful French expatriate,
I could have married and come back to my country,
we would have had 3 or 4 kids and maybe... a castle...
Even if I was not able to put words on it,
I think, I started to feel that my life was totally disillusioned.
Meaning there was no more magic in it… What is this magic?
Magic, it's like when there is a spark, a bond, a desire,
a meaning, even a touch of craziness, when you feel that anything is possible!
I was “disillusioned” because I was bored, I found everything complicated,
I felt cut from the reality, from the others, or superficially tied to them,
I made shaky compromises with my convictions and my deepest desires.
I wanted my life to be enchanted again.
Thankfully, when I was a student, I had found refuge in painting.
So, I quit up my job and started to paint on a fulltime basis.
And I brought back magic into my life by choosing a different reality.
Then, I came back from Peru and I settled here, in La Rochelle.
I had spent enough time alone in my studio, I wanted to be in the streets, and act in the open.
For instance, with people from La Rochelle, we made this:
our Mast for Peace, a structure dedicated to peace.
This is what I call an enchanted project!
After that, as I didn't work, I took part in several associations
contributed to insurgency actions
secretly planting trees or tomato plants in wastelands
Of course these activities did not pay the rent.
So I tried by all means to cut my expenses, which was also consistent with my convictions.
I wanted my life to be simple and humble.
But then I had to face practical matters.
OK, utopy's a nice thing: live with less money, almost nothing, etc.
But then how do you find a roof? How do you eat?
It rapidly became obvious that housing is the biggest expense we have to deal with...
So I managed to live in smaller and smaller places,
but it became uncomfortable and I cramped for room...
I had another problem: I had a roof but I still didn't have a home
At that time, I met this Polish guy who had just arrived in La Rochelle
and we shared the same convictions.
During our trips in Germany or in Spain, we both had known
squats which were really animated places,
places where people lived a form of citizenship without compromises
and it had inspired us both.
So we thought: "Why not us?"
There are so many empty houses, we just have to squat one in!
We've looked and finally found a deserted house.
We came closer, entered it, there was even a guy who told us:
"Go ahead, it's meant to be destroyed anyway!"
so suddenly the day we settled in this house we became landlords.
We lived there for a year and a half. We had a great time.
We could paint on the walls, do whatever we wanted.
we left the garden return to nature, it was fabulous!
We really felt at home.
We found everything we needed in the street: furniture, food, wood to warm up the house.
It was not a hard time, because we had chosen this life.
We were no lazybones neither, we had a busy schedule:
- we went to association meetings, - organised charity meals,
- planted trees, and we also had a house to look after!
And then the squat had to shut, and we had to find another solution.
I wanted to push it further, be more independent: I just wanted water and land.
So I got an ad published, I titled it: "Landless in La Rochelle"
A friend of a friend offered us a land, a vegetable patch, with a well, right in the middle of La Rochelle.
So we settled there, with some tents.
Then a navigator, a friend gave me an old sail. In it, I started on cutting a big semicircle.
I gathered big bamboos and I used them to build a teepee.
Teepees are the traditional homes of certain Native American tribes.
This teepee was one of my favorite homes. Very high, very airy too.
I remember, I could hear the night breathe, even right in the middle of the city.
I felt like in the movie Little Indian, Big City, my feathers were growing, I could hear the heartbeats of Earth
Back then, I was 30, and I could have been diagnosed with a late but severe teenage angst,
a sort of epidemic reaction to my social origins,
but it did not get better...
because right after that, I was invited to help assemble Joseph's yurt.
Yurts are the traditional homes of the nomads in the steppes of Central Asia.
We were to meet in the back yard of his grand-father, near Surgères.
And then the sky opened, and in its blinding light, the yurt came down and landed here, just in front of us!
OK... this is almost how it happened!
We put down a floor, installed a door, a window, put up the light framework,
we coated it with a woolen cloth, added an insulating material and a weatherproof fabric.
He turned on the stove, and we partied this very night. It was just dead easy!
The yurt, compared to the squat, dilapidated, cold, with the risk of eviction and the bad image,
Compared to the teepee, where I feared the winter,
The yurt, with its floor, its closed door and its stove, really felt like luxury camping!
A legal squat! We could live close to the nature, with no rent, no guarantee or inventory,
without bothering anyone, lived in a cosy and warm place, without debts, or just a little.
And it's all round, so beautiful!
For us, this was THE solution, The panacea for housing crisis!
A real home!
Right after that, my life took a new turn: I was about to become a DAD.
After all these years of being an activist, of anti-GMO, anti-nuclear actions, and other...
I had to come back to a 'normal' reality. Earn my life to take on this new responsibility.
and be part of the system... OH NO NO! I wanted to stay consistent with my convictions,
and do something useful, so I placed an ad - Another one, love them! -
"Young craftsman builds yurt, hut, teepee homes".
Someone answered, I sent a quote,
The client accepted it and I built a yurt which was delivered just before my daughter was born.
I made another one, then 5 more, 10 more, and that's how I learned my job, I invented it!
After that, with Joseph and a few other friends, we created a cooperative,
Since then, we have constructed maybe 150 or 200 yurts. Which are almost all used as main residence.
Couples, families with children, even retired persons live in them.
We started by being 5 and now we are 10.
It takes about a month for one person to build a yurt.
It costs between 5,000€ and 15,000€.
We build turnkey yurts. But as we work with people whose incomes are quite low,
we offer our help for participative constructions: we supply material, plans and training.
We help them to make sure they manage to follow through.
I love my job, I wish everyone to love their job as much as I love mine!
There are also many people that build their yurts by themselves, even the less dexterous or qualified ones!
They always manage it; the framework is very indulgent, and cleverly thought...
We prepare everything at the workshop and place the yurt on the plot.
The plots are lent, rented, or bought.
After that everyone chooses their water and electricity supply.
People almost always choose to install a composting toilet.
Which solves the question of sewerage.
For the heating then it works just fine with a wood burning stove.
it is actually much easier to warm up than most of houses...
For the rest, it is all about smartness, creativity at work:
solar panels, wind turbines, grid connection, all modern conveniences or even candle light...
Often the people who settle in yurts are often eco-aware, so they make the most of it...
We don't wait for the next G20 for OUR energy revolution!
They even should - you know what? - come and see in the yurts, they might even find some real solutions!
Should it be yurts or other housings of this type,
it's a complete new way of considering country and town planning.
It's a whole new housing philosophy,
it's not all about becoming owner, because we are nomads.
Being an owner is fine, but it's also a good thing just to have the right to be where you are...
To be entitled to use the ground we live on.
It is even more legitimate that our settlements are respectful of the site, and reversible.
Reversible: meaning that the plot can return to its agricultural or natural function immediately after we leave.
It's a way of life and at the same time a normal life.
Kids go to school.. Parents go to work.. It is just a life where we barely don't pay any rent.
And you, what would you do if you had no rent to pay?
As far as I'm concerned, thanks to my yurt, I managed to build a business.
Now, I can also manage to reduced my working hours to spend it with my daughter,
and also take lyric singing lessons.
You are lucky! I do not have the time for a little performance!
During my free time, I also built this geodesic dome of 25sqm.
It's a cute little place, rounder than a yurt and even easier to heat.
Over it there is a covering material that we have invented.
Which should be more durable than the cloth that we used for the yurts.
Let me now authorise you to think that it is not so much a teenage angst, but rather a real obsession...
I often hear people saying: things are too complicated,
other people decides, that there's nothing we can do.
As for me, I'm a human being and personally, I find that the greenhouse effect
or the inequality between poor and rich countries bothers me, I find it anxiety-producing.
So the first thing I can do is to live my life in a way that is consistent with this feeling.
With a more modest life, I feel much more linked to the rest of Humanity.
I feel more in line with my philosophical ideas.
Because there is a question I would like to find an answer to:
What would be the standard of living that would be acceptable and sustainable for each habitant of Earth?
The Earth is the traditional home of mankind and all known living species!
Can anyone fly as often as we use the underground?
Can everyone on Earth consume as many resources as us Westerners do?
As long as this question remains unanswered. I'd like to tell you that my way of life stays negotiable.
Reassess our standards of living, our comfort can also be a source of liberty.
The liberty of doing or not doing: My life is frugal, but I have no debts.
I am responsible for my existence. I'm the architect of my reality. I still have my sovereign power.
Today, I'm happy to present to you my treasures: the yurt, the dome, the teepee...
I'm happy to tell you that even with a very small amount of money, you can be owner of your home,
and build YOUR reality.
This is the way I found to reach my enchantment and to share it.
I hope that each one of you will find your home among the many possibilities existing or to even invent it.
I wish to all of you to feel the enchantment within yours hearts.
I wish everyone to become the owners of your lives!
Thank you!