“If you had told me fifty years ago that I would finance the building of Arcosanti  from the proceeds of windbells, I would have said you were crazy.” Paolo Soleri

Arcosanti was largely built by student volunteers and financed by the sale of wind-bells (wind-chimes)

A worried-looking PAOLO SOLERI supervising his student volunteer builders at Arcosanti 

Paolo Soleri (1919-2013)

Soleri, who was born in Turin, came to the US in 1946 and briefly studied with Frank Lloyd Wright before falling-out with the world-famous architect over Wright’s promotion of low-rise suburbias.  To his many disciples Soleri was the “architect-philosopher” guru whilst his critics lampooned him as “the best known architect who never built anything”.  In his magnus opum – “Arcology: The City in the Image of Man” (MIT,1969) – Soleri took an ostensibly reasonable idea (3D enclosed cities) and maxed-it up into vastly huge visionary structures like his 6 million inhabitant “Babelnoah”.   His mesmerising book of 60cm wide pages is filled with intricate renditions of fantasy cities like Babeldiga, Novanoah, Babelnoah, and others with similar grandiosely fanciful names.   It was a thrilling futuristic prophecy for idealistic 1970s architectural students but sadly, and arguably inexplicably,  the current and powerful environmental movement has never endorsed or (to my knowledge) even considered the advantages of Arcologies.    It seems like it was well before its time – the idea became forgotten well before before the enormous current interest in sustainable living, “saving the planet”, and eco-cities.

The windowless and non-airconditioned residential units in his largely moribund “Arcosanti” experimental community (“urban laboratory”) in Arizona were described by a visiting Australian film crew as

“tiny as monks cells and almost as frugal”

Soleri practiced frugality and expected his many enthusiastic “disciples” – unpaid student volunteers who helped both with the building of Arcosanti and the casting of his bronze and ceramic wind-bells – to do the same.  He was very scornful of capitalism and consumerism and luxury living – all of which he accused of destroying the environment.  Soleri especially condemned “sprawl”, which he regarded as nothing short of evil, due to the enormous environmental and social problems created by it.

 I wholeheartedly agree with Soleri’s opinions on sprawl, but “frugality” doesn’t sell and his idea of 3D enclosed cities deserves far more media attention.

Reception building contains a student cafe and a display area for the sale of Soleri wind-bells to visitors

A selection of Arcosanti “wind bells”