ARCOSANTI – THE ARCOLOGY THAT NEVER WAS

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Only the grey buildings have been built

Compared with the behemoth hyper-structures in his superlative book, Soleri’s Arcosanti project (begun in 1970) is very modest in both scale and conception.  Arcosanti cannot really be called an Arcology since, rather than being an enclosed ‘city within a building’, it is composed of a number of separate buildings.  It is also totally reliant on conventional water, power, and (most) of its food, so unlike the Oasis City concept, there is very little sustainability aspect.

When I visited (and stayed for a couple of days) in 1999 I asked the middle-aged resident in charge of admission how many people actually lived there full-time like him.   Very few apparently – no more than a dozen or two, none of whom were in evidence and greatly outnumbered by the students.   He seemed sadly resigned to the fact that it would never be completed.

Frugality – a rather unappealing aspect of Soleri’s austere philosophy – is very evident at Arcosanti.  Its inhabitants are expected to live in simple non air-conditioned rooms with no windows, sharing communal ablution and kitchen facilities.   When featured on the popular Australian TV “Beyond 2000” science programme, the reporter likened the living quarters to “monastic cells”.