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rfmcdonaldA while ago, numerous people on Facebook shared Allison Meier's Hyperallergic essay on Paolo Soleri, his community of Arcosanti, and the idea of arcologies. Illustrated with numerous of his crayon drawings, Meier introduces her readers to a vision of an urban future that, despite Arcosanti's failure to develop, might still seem relevant.
A few of the bronze wind bells Soleri designed for his city hang in the AVAM window, and they along with about a dozen structures half-finished, 70 miles north of Phoenix, are the physical realization of Arcosanti. Its sign proclaimed at the entrance: “If you are truly concerned about the problems of pollution, waste, energy depletion, land, water, air and biological conservation, poverty, segregation, intolerance, population containment, fear and disillusionment, join us.” Soleri died on April 9, 2013 at the age of 93, now buried among the pieces of his urban planning experiment legacy that he worked on until his death, long after his profile as a prophet of the future had lowered. Still, while the concrete structures might feel more retrofuture than realistic, there is something still contemporary about Soleri’s ideas
It never reached the 5,000 inhabitants its creator dreamed of or produced much more than decorative wind bells, but the utopian city of Arcosanti may have just been ahead of its time. Designed by Italian architect Paolo Soleri, the compact metropolis was the embodiment of his idea of “arcology” — a fusion of architecture with ecology.
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Among all these Soleri has a vision that’s equal parts reality, impossible, and perhaps increasingly relevant. Arcosanti hit its peak in the 1970s, with Soleri leading the construction of his dream city out in Arizona, a city where urban sprawl would be compacted and people would live in a way minimally invasive to the environment and harmonious through close interaction. Not dissimilar from Frederick Law Olmsted before him, Soleri believed that good design could make people morally good. Born in Turin, he first came to Arizona as an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright. Yet while Wright’s own future-thinking urban plan Broadacre City — recently the focus of a MoMA exhibition — was all about beautifying a suburban spread, Soleri took the opposite approach and pulled everything a metropolis would need into one super-structure. The “Bowl” and “Tower” sections on display at AVAM are just two parts of a 50-foot scroll that formed the foundation of Arcosanti. With common areas and embedded gardens, it’s a sort of hive of interconnected, self-sufficient spaces — all enthusiastically and vividly sketched in colored crayon.
A few of the bronze wind bells Soleri designed for his city hang in the AVAM window, and they along with about a dozen structures half-finished, 70 miles north of Phoenix, are the physical realization of Arcosanti. Its sign proclaimed at the entrance: “If you are truly concerned about the problems of pollution, waste, energy depletion, land, water, air and biological conservation, poverty, segregation, intolerance, population containment, fear and disillusionment, join us.” Soleri died on April 9, 2013 at the age of 93, now buried among the pieces of his urban planning experiment legacy that he worked on until his death, long after his profile as a prophet of the future had lowered. Still, while the concrete structures might feel more retrofuture than realistic, there is something still contemporary about Soleri’s ideas
