There's No Place Like Here: Communal Living with Nikki Silva

Communal living with Nikki Silva

There's no place like here

Hi, I'm Nikki Silva, and we're at La Selva, where I live and I live with a group of three other families.

When our kids were about in high school, they come up with the term' commune'.

We never called it a commune when we started out.

We were just a bunch of people trying to create a place to live.

None of us could afford a piece of property on our own.

So we found this place,

and it was just a shack on 10 acres, overlooking the Monterey bay. Beautiful piece of property.

There were nine of us in the beginning, and they moved into this tiny little house.

Everyone was sort of squirelled away in some little corner or bedroom or someplace.

After living so closely together, we quickly realised how we didn't want to live.

When we started, about 30 years ago, each partner was allotted a certain amount of square feet.

We made certain esthetic decisions and design considerations, about, OK, it's going to be redwood siding on the outside,

and corrugated tin roofs, and they're going to be at this pitch.

But then, when people got inside, they could do whatever they wanted to do.

After we got into the living houses, and everybody moved out of the shacks.

They started to work on construction of the big house.

We have a lot of recycled materials that we've been working with. The place has cost almost nothing to build,

something like 8 dollars a square foot.

The trusses were from the old Santa Cruz bus line, that burned down.

And Charles, my husband, was driving home from town one day, and found all these 15 foot trusses piled up.

And so that kind of determined the size of the big house.

This is a shared space. We have a big industrial kitchen.

Chris, who's sort of the mastermind in a lot of ways, he a lot of restaurant kitchens around town,

and he was very set on doing a big industrial size kitchen.

The individual houses have no toilets or showers or bathtubs.

So this is the bathing facility.

And the granite is from an old bank and the glass block is salvaged.

Just being able to work out you fantasies this place,

and this place kind of illustrates that,

when you walk around and see Joanne's garden, you see Charles studio,

and Chris' architectural contraptions

You know, the new vegetable garden. It's just, you know, people have these visions and we are able to do them.

This is the outdoor cooking area.

We grow a lot.

And then there's a pizza oven, and an outdoor fireplace, which is great.

In the evenings and parties we're always sitting here.

The most important rule is

that every night we eat together.

We don't have any meetings. We never have a meeting.

If we have a meeting, we fight. So we don't have meetings.

We have dinner. Sometimes we fight at dinner,

but at least it's over good food, and the next day

with the people ou've just had an argument with.

So it tends to work itself out like a family.