This is a story about – and a little surprise for – Yuki. It’s also a story about Martin, Peter, Jady, Luciano, and all the other helpers who gather every Saturday in the Patio La Osa Mayor. It’s the story of a movement of people with the goal of making something happen. It is a story about the progress in a social space.

If you want something to become reality, feel what you will feel when it becomes reality. Juan Petry

This is a story for you if you no longer believe that your government has your best interests at heart, not now, not before, and not in the future. It is a story for you if you don’t wait for solutions, but take action yourself and feel the power within you to make a difference. It is a story for you if you can give without expectation and without worrying about your own gain. It is a story that many before you have written, and you are invited to become a part of it, whether as a silent observer or an active participant.

Many years ago, I was invited to Timișoara in Romania. A sculptor friend showed me the people and the natural surroundings. Among other things, we visited a monastery in the mountains. The monastery was under construction, in the 21st century! Every evening, after a hard day’s work in the fields, the farmers from the village came and worked on the building for two or three hours. Everything was made by hand, just as it had been hundreds of years before. The farmers sang songs and were joyful. They knew they would have to do this for decades to complete the monastery buildings. Time somehow didn’t matter. The farmers received no wages. At the end of their work, they were given a hot meal and walked back to their village. This had been going on for several years, and it would continue for many more. I found this dedication to a cause very remarkable and was deeply impressed. The connection between the people and their joy was palpable.

The idea of ​​creating a patio where people are equal, where humanity has ample space to flourish, likely originated in this observation of these happy people back then in Romania.

La Osa Mayor (LOM) will be a patio in the old quarter of Cervera del Maestre, where the houses were predominantly built from the rubble of the fortress after the Moors were expelled.

In this patio, we will build an open kitchen that will welcome visitors. Everyone who steps through the portal into the patio accepts one rule: Here, we are all equal! Just like at Epicurus’ garden gate, we can meet as equals among equals. That is what truly defines this social space.

Even during the construction phase, volunteers arrive and bring food or drinks, sharing these offerings with everyone else who has come that day to help build this patio. And so it will continue later on. One person brings wine, another water, one brings salad, another bread. It always comes together to create a special experience: the shared brunch after physical labor.

The vertical orientation of Gothic architecture is rich in symbolism. The striving for height and elevation were expressions of spiritual orientation. The facade of the La Osa Mayor is dominated by the four-part arch of the main portal. Everyone who looks at this entrance experiences a special feeling as they pass through these arches. And that is precisely the intention.

People from many countries have contributed to this facade. And many more will follow. Unlike the monastery in Romania, these people often don’t know each other and have never met before. They come together through the power of the idea of ​​building such a social space. Often, one of the helpers continues a task that another had started weeks before.

La Osa Mayor was a house on the street Las Parras, inhabited until about 1970, most recently by a single woman who often stood on the balcony watching the children play in the street. After that, the building fell into disrepair. First, cracks appeared in the roof, then water seeped in and destroyed the individual floors. The wet, termite-eaten beams ends could no longer bear the weight, and the building collapsed from within. Ivy spread, tearing down parts of the facade with its own weight. In the rubble, we found a remarkable stone. It was intricately carved and shaped like a house. Like many stones in the houses of the street Las Parras, this stone had likely been incorporated into the castle over 1000 years earlier. We gave this stone a place of honor on the facade, thus establishing a connection to the history of the village—then a town. History constantly opens and closes its circles. The stone, once a symbol of a military installation, becomes a structural element of the facade of a social space. This is reminiscent of “swords into plowshares” and this transformation is a recurring and necessary one.

Houses like this one were typically inhabited by poor families with many children in earlier times. The choice of building materials for the walls, the wooden beams above the entrance doors, and the simple tiles under the balconies all offer insights into the builders’ living conditions. Often, these ordinary people didn’t even have glass windows in their shops. A simple wooden shed sufficed. Those who had to perform many hours of hard fieldwork each day wanted dark rooms and were content with very little light. One of these wooden sheds is incorporated into the facade of La Osa Mayor. It was also found in the rubble within the building and restored using simple methods.

On the one hand, natural stone houses are very durable and robust. The mixture of natural stone, clay, loam, and lime provides both strength and flexibility. Natural stone houses don’t simply break apart or collapse. The stones can move within the walls, thus relieving tension over the years. A modern concrete wall would hold until it cracks. Then it would no longer be able to support anything.

On the other hand, a natural stone house requires regular maintenance. The clay plaster on the exterior is protected by a layer of lime. This needs to be repaired periodically. At La Osa Mayor, this hadn’t been done for over 55 years. In some places, the stones in the lower part of the facade are only loosely stacked on top of each other. The plaster is missing in many places, and with it, a secure bond between the stones.

One day, our neighbor Martin stopped by. He listened to the story and the vision for the future of La Osa Mayor and spontaneously offered to take care of those sections of the natural stone walls. He suggested a lime plaster. This material has the advantage of being breathable, providing good waterproofing, and being easy to work with.

La Osa Mayor is a social hub for the residents of the street, the neighborhood in the village, and for all of Cervera del Maestre—its inhabitants and visitors.

Martin brought tools, expertise, and time. He even donated some money to buy the bags of lime. He said he would come the following Saturday to begin. And he did.

La Osa Mayor is a private project. There is no public funding or government support. Therefore, financial resources are limited. La Osa Mayor is an investment in the quality of life of its visitors, not a commercial enterprise.

This makes it essential to seek cost-effective solutions. We consider the rubble pile inside the ruins a treasure trove. The treasures are the building materials stored there, which we salvage, process, and repurpose.

As with the Romans, everything is reused on-site. Energy is stored in all materials. Even the transport to the construction site is a form of stored energy. The more that can be reused, the better. Old concrete wall remnants are remixed and used to reinforce walls. What can be reused on-site doesn’t need to be transported away and doesn’t burden a landfill.

Many niches are carved into the walls of La Osa Mayor. The facade, both inside and out, also offers space for the extraordinary. What was often the site of a religious sculpture at the entrance of the farmhouse in the past is now a recurring architectural element, celebrating and adorning the social space of La Osa Mayor. As a protected repository for what is considered precious, the niche also provides a space for contemplation. The many niches of La Osa Mayor invite discovery, reflection, and contemplation, encouraging meditation.

Above the main portal, two openings will face the visitor, one on the left and one on the right. The one on the right will usually—but not always—remain closed. The one on the left will offer a view into the interior of the patio. There will be something special to discover at both locations, but that’s another story.

A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone at the apex of an arch . it is the final piece placed during construction and keeps all the stones into position, allowing the arch to bear weight.

This stone originates from the Cervera dry riverbed. Over millennia, it has migrated from the upper Maestrazgo mountains, carried a little further by each flood. This wanderer through time now finds its place in the inner second arch. It greets the visitor and offers a final, upward glance as one bids farewell.

When we began rebuilding CASAdelDRAGON almost 40 years ago, we removed a lot of rubble and soil from the old, damaged clay floors of the old house. With a small trailer and an old VW van, we drove to the village’s local landfill. On one of our first trips, a farmer stopped us and asked us to fill the dump trucks on the farm track instead of shoveling the load over the rubbish at the landfill. We were initially hesitant. It was a public road, and we were carrying private rubble. But the farmer calmly explained that this was the custom here. The people who use the farm tracks also take care of their upkeep. Our rubble contained no hazardous materials; it was just sand, clay, natural stones, and shards of pottery. This was good for the roads and the vehicles. And it would ultimately be good for the backs of the farmers on their tractors, too. We are now using the excess soil and clay from the La Osa Mayor fields to repair the farm tracks near our Color Garden. The heavy rains of the past few weeks had washed away much of the street materials.

When we started rebuilding the facade of La Osa Mayor, we didn’t yet know how we would be able to work at such heights. We looked for used scaffolding and found a supplier nearby. These scaffolds are currently being decommissioned and replaced with new ones. They are sufficient for our needs. It was a pleasure to erect this 4-meter-high scaffolding in front of the facade for the first time and then be able to work at a comfortable height. It’s good to be able to work in teams of at least two for this kind of work. It’s very tiring to have to constantly go up and down alone to bring in materials. Jardy and Peter donated one section to us. That was also a great help and will allow us to renovate and repoint the interior walls of La Osa Mayor in the future.

Holle was very excited and delighted to learn how to build a brick wall with clay bricks. She had never done any bricklaying before. We chose a spot where she could stand safely and prepared the materials. So, on a Saturday, she built a good portion of the balcony’s jamb and cleaned the joints at the end of the day.

The facade features another special niche, adorned with a small Gothic arch. The stones for the arch came from the beach at Vinaros. That’s another story. The last few stones were just enough for this small arch.

Christian lives in Valencia. He discovered Cervera del Maestre as a place of community life. One Saturday, he came and patiently separated countless clay bricks. These bricks came from the demolition of a house and had been stored at the Color Garden for years. Now, these bricks, too, are finding a new, permanent home as part of the architecture of La Osa Mayor.

Christian didn’t just diligently separate bricks. He also used compressed air to clean the machines of the fine dust. People like Christian are invaluable to communities; they are autonomous, make their own decisions, and sustainably take on self-chosen tasks. People in communities are, in a sense, independent, entrepreneurs, researchers, pioneers. These entrepreneurial types long for people like Christian to visit, to become community founders themselves. This promises high-level cooperation. That’s also why the members of Familiafeliz regularly visit other communities. For their members, this is just as much of a gift.

Construction site logistics is a widely underestimated aspect of achieving the goals of a project like La Osa Mayor. Approximately 50% of the work is spent preparing everything so that the actual project – the results of which will ideally be visible in the architecture – can be carried out: delivery and storage of building materials, preparation, site setup (scaffolding), and transport to the site. This is a photo of the temporary scaffolding that served us well for four months (thanks to Dietmar, who helped to built it).

And this is the new framework for the coming working days.

The photos show the events of the last few weeks. The question remains: what exactly did Yuki build, and what is her statement?

In the ancient Chinese philosophy, yin and yang is the concept that there exist cosmic principles or forces that are opposite but complementary, which interact, interconnect, support and perpetuate each other very well. Yin and Yang together form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the interdependent components, and both parts are essential for the cohesion of the whole.

In Chinese mythology, the universe develops out of a primary chaos of primordial qi or material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang, force and motion leading to form and matter. Yin is retractive, passive, contractive and receptive in nature in a contrasting relationship to Yang that is repelling, active, expansive and repulsive in principle; this dichotomy in some form, is seen in all things in nature and their patterns of change, difference and transformations. For example, biological, psychological and cosmological seasonal cycles, the historical evolution of landscapes over eons. The original meaning of yin was depicted as the northerly shaded side of a hill and yang being the bright southerly aspect. When pertaining to human gender, yin is associated to more rounded feminine characteristics and yang as sharp and masculine traits.

The Yin-Yang symbol is engraved in a marble slab from Italy, rescued 40 years ago from a marble dealer’s shipping container in Siegburg Schreck near Cologne, Germany. The slab was stored for years at our German branch of the community and eventually found its way to the beginning of construction at CASAdelDRAGON in Cervera del Maestre. The symbol was painstakingly carved into the marble by hand over several days. However, no suitable permanent location could be found.

Now, almost 40 years later, Yuki has embedded it in the balcony recess. It was deliberately installed horizontally. Miraculously, it connects the interior and exterior of La Osa Mayor, and the location could not have been better chosen. The slab serves as a reminder that there is a connection between the inner world of this social space and the outer world. Both spaces are interdependent and form something much greater.

Yuki from Japan was here. She came to help on a Saturday. Her help was a gift without expectations. We accepted the gift. And Yuki built the niche around the marble tablet. She visits Europe. She visits La Osa Mayor.

Yuki is helping to write our story, through her actions. This can also be interpreted as a call to develop a synthesis of European culture and Asian wisdom; that would be helpful in these times. But that’s another story.