CUMMINGTON — Apparently, you can’t take anything away from a man who sees things — even his own leg — as “just stuff.”
The last time the Gazette pulled up to Stephen Yoshen’s home, it was a cold, gray November morning. That visit came mere hours after his workshop and everything in it had been swallowed up in flames. Nothing was left except the concrete foundation.
Nonetheless, Yoshen was relaxed and unperturbed, slouched in an office chair in his kitchen. He had just lost his car, industrial machinery and $40,000 worth of lumber, including high quality cherry, maple and cedar beams.
“You know it’s just stuff. Nobody was in there,” the anti-capitalist builder said after the fire on Nov. 13 of last year. “No one was going to get hurt. It’s money, it’s stuff. But that stuff is not so important to me. You know my family, my community are.”
Since then, he has lost something else. This time, his right leg. And his answer after losing it was the same.
On a recent follow-up visit about nine months later, Yoshen stood wearing a single Converse sneaker that looked more like a sandal, its fabric peeling and discolored beyond recognition, while leaning on crutches. He was interviewed at the entrance to the unfinished workshop, which is being rebuilt with the help of community members.
For decades, the workshop had served as a community haven where people could come, work on projects, use tools and pick Yoshen’s brain for advice. The new space will return to that original purpose once it’s complete.
While progress continues, Yoshen is also having a prosthetic leg made and doesn’t plan on letting anything slow him down. He even plans to be back on his bike soon.
Of all the emotions he could feel about losing three-quarters of his leg due to persistent infections stemming from cancer two decades ago, Yoshen said he’s excited to learn how to get around with only one.
That attitude surprised his housemate and apprentice, Nino Soberon, who recalled Yoshen’s reaction following a checkup with his doctor six months ago.
“He said it was awesome, it was great — they’re going to cut off my leg! … I was just completely flabbergasted,” Soberon remembers Yoshen telling him. “Even his leg is just stuff.”
Despite the obstacles, Yoshen is still climbing ladders and building. Just up the street from his workshop, Yoshen is working on new home for Donovan Arthen, who is moving to the tiny town from Easthampton.
“With one leg, he was on top of the second-story roof, grabbing trusses from a crane and pulling them down onto the roof,” Arthen said.
Rebuilding
Yoshen expressed immense gratitude for all the people who have made rebuilding possible. After the fire destroyed his tools, he relied on people to contribute tools before rebuilding started.
Thanks to a GoFundMe campaign that raised some $60,000 to replace his tools, Yoshen now has more than enough. In some cases he had two or three sets of the same tools.
“I haven’t had to buy a single tool,” Yoshen said. “People have been incredibly generous.”
Yoshen’s impact on the community is likely a big reason so many people stepped up to help following last fall’s fire. Soberon said that if a map of the Hilltowns were used as a dartboard, more likely than not, the dart would land on a house that Yoshen built.
He also built Earthdance, an arts organization and retreat center in Plainfield that for 40 years has been a gathering space for workshops, artist residencies and community programming.
Now, the table has turned and many of those neighbors he has helped through the years are now helping him. The new shop rests on the same foundation that remained intact after the fire. New studs mingle with a few old, charred ones, while the foundation retains dark black spots.
So far, exterior wall sheathing gives shape to the building. Later, it will be clad with a green metal layer. On it, neighbors, friends and family members will paint flowers.
Yoshen expects the facade to receive quite a bit of attention from people driving by. “Hopefully, we won’t disturb traffic driving up and down the hill,” he said jokingly.
The new space features more windows than the previous shop, which only had one, though fewer than he originally planned. “I thought I would put in more windows, but you know, in a wood shop, wall space is really valuable,” Yoshen said.
Yoshen currently lives just up a hill from the shop, in a multicolored home nestled behind trees. But he will be outfitting the new shop with a place for himself. On one side of the 40-by-60-foot structure is a door floating about 15 feet in the air. It will soon be accessible with a handicap ramp.
The new shop is roomy, with 14-foot-high ceilings and garage-door-sized entryways to allow materials to be easily brought inside. He also advocates for overhangs and included one over the main entrance.
He hopes his accessory dwelling unit above the shop will be done by late September. Insulation will continue going in through November, after which stations and shelving will be installed to organize tools.
The state Fire Marshal’s office concluded the cause of the fire was undetermined. Yoshen received $200,000 from his insurance company.
From biker to builder
Yoshen identifies as a “builder who doesn’t believe in capitalism.” In his 20s, he traveled the world on a bike. When he returned, he worked with his father doing flooring, an experience that catapulted his career in building 30 years ago.
His approach is both practical and playful, whimsical and wild. He invites people to create spaces with the awe and fantastic creativity of a kindergartner. Improvisation is a key ingredient, he said.
“Creativity,” he said, “ the stuff that we learned in kindergarten.”
Yoshen said he tells clients that he hopes they have a good therapist before they begin to work with him. While he is soft-spoken, he said when it comes to his work, he can often be crude and adamant with clients.
On the practical side of things, a Yoshen signature is overdosing on insulation to keep in warmth during the winter months. Being so far north, he also downplayed the need for air conditioning outside of maybe five days a year. “Take showers, put a fan on,” he said.
He is particularly taken with the architecture of northern Cameroon, where round mud huts are topped with thatched roofs that resemble witches’ hats. “Just that sloping, that shape is so pleasing,” he said. “And I would do it with metal and other sorts of materials.”
His architectural influences range from these simple forms to some of the world’s grandest buildings, including the cathedrals of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona. “His buildings blow me away,” Yoshen said. “So playful, so wild.”
Yoshen is also a firm believer in asymmetry, recalling a lesson from an architecture class in Sydney, Australia: “The professor said that symmetry is death, and asymmetry just feels alive.”
When building a house for a client, Yoshen gives each person who will live there the opportunity to contribute one thing that will make them happy. For Yoshen, elaborately large bathtubs do the trick.
“Just one little piece that will bring delight or joy, whatever it is,” he said. “A light fixture, it can be a closet door. It can be anything, just something that they know is theirs.”
