Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Coho Journal: Last Call for News items/updates for Spring issue

[Cheryl A. Charis-Graves (ccharis]

Raines, could you please forward this to Stella Tarnay for the coho
journal? I was told 200-300 words, this is 250. Thanks.

Raines Cohen wrote:
 
> So, please send to me or post to the list any items you'd like to submit
> for inclusion by this TUESDAY evening 4/9, please.

Harmony Village in Golden, Colorado, recently completed laying down
brick pavers on their central walkway. Harmony Village is a Southwestern
pueblo-style design of 27 households  located at the base of the
Colorado Rockies outside Denver. Completed in 1997, the walkway project
had been planned since the design phase. However, the prospect of
covering 8500 square feet with 45,000 bricks had been a bit daunting!

The brick pavers were delivered in July, and villagers labored well past
Labor Day to complete the multi-color patterns. Original calls for
"simplicity" were supplanted by the realization "if we're going to the
trouble ?" In the central plaza, a six-armed sunburst design radiates
from a central paver etched with our calligraphied initials, "HV" ? a
custom touch by one of our more creative residents. Another resident
mastered the art of shaping square bricks around a circular sewer cover.
One courtyard design became a "hockey court" at the request of two boys
whose homes faced the courtyard. Drainage pans presented another
challenge, requiring the cohousing formula of 5 variations on every idea
and hours and hours of discussion. One set of sinuous curves around a
courtyard required a full day of "design time" along with nearly 200
"special cuts" on the wet saw, this labor duplicated 12 times around 3
different courtyards.

Nearly every  household pitched in, some for a day, others for several
weekends. At the end, we have a work of art that visually joins every
household with the other, a quilt-like  ribbon of handwork and collaboration.

Cheryl Charis-Graves
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