"In nature, as an organism evolves it increases in complexity and it also becomes a more compact or miniaturized system. Similarly a city should function as a living system. Arcology, architecture and ecology as one integral process, is capable of demonstrating positive response to the many problems of urban civilization, population, pollution, energy and natural resource depletion, food scarcity and quality of life. Arcology recognizes the necessity of the radical reorganization of the sprawling urban landscape into dense, integrated, three-dimensional cities in order to support the complex activities that sustain human culture. The city is the necessary instrument for the evolution of humankind." —Paolo Soleri
Mom and I arrived at
Arcosanti and immediately said to each other "What the hell is going on here?" The place looked desolate and run down and the feeling was made even more clear by the fact that there was only one other car in the parking lot.... here we go on another one of our crazy adventures, this one inspired by me. I first learned of Paolo Soleri's "urban laboratory" from my foundations professor during my freshman year of college. He was a man who spoke in riddles constantly and somehow managed to link the seemingly most obscure topics to the study of art. That "somehow" continues to confound me to this day, though looking back on it, some of the topics weren't that far fetched, such is the case with Arcosanti.
We stumbled into the cafe 30 minutes before dinner was over and got the last of pretty much everything. A man at the table next to us struck up a conversation with me; he introduced himself as Bob and called himself an inventor. Bob was visibly enthusiastic about all things solar energy and was brought to Arcosanti to help them figure out how to incorporate solar into the site. We soon figured out we had no idea what to do next; no one had officially checked us in or given us any directions. Bob caught on to this, as he had with other new visitors, and offered to show us to the guest rooms and take us on a tour of the site. We walked back to the car with Bob and drove down an unmarked road that wound around to the bottom of the hillside. The single row of rooms looked like individual storage sheds. The front of each room was a wall of windows looking across the shallow valley to the next mesa. The next morning we took the "official" tour of Arcosanti. We and everyone else who had the priviledge of taking "the Bob tour" all agreed his was better. His enthusiasm for the project and Paolo Soleri was more apparent that our resident guide. He took us to the "off limits" places and stuck us in front of his computer while he went on and on about all the inventions he had patented.
Arcosanti is Soleri's "city of the future," an environment where people's home, workplace and food source coexist in a single self-sustainting complex. It is an living experiment, or as the name suggests a "laborartory," a place where the architect's theories are actually being tested. So far, only a fraction of the master plan has been built, but the work is ongoing with the help of residents and teaching workshops.
Roof of our guest room
Ceramics
Vaults
Amphitheater
Roof of the Foundry
Guest rooms (directly below the crane)
