Back in 1994, not long after I conceived the concept of Oasis-Cities (or “Pyramid Cities” as I originally named them), I was researching the idea in the library of UNLV (Las Vegas) when I came across a truly mesmerising book.  Although it came as no surprise that such an appealing (appalling to some) idea as 3D cities had been conceptualised before, I was overwhelmed by the mind-boggling scale of Soleri’s “Arcologies”.   

“ARCOLOGY – The City in the image of Man” – Paolo Soleri (MIT, 1969)

Each of its super-sized double-spread pages contained intricately-detailed hand-drawn plans of gargantuan buildings – each one a self-contained city.  Co-incidentally, the Las Vegas Luxor Hotel, to this day the only mega-pyramid ever intended to be “lived-in”, had only recently been completed.  My only disappointment with Soleri’s Arcology designs was that only one was “pyramidal”, and that was a very strange inverted thing on stilts, as can be seen in the image above.   For someone promoting environmental architecture I thought this a major omission on his part for reasons explained HERE.       

Paolo Soleri at his studio – “Cosanti”, Scottsdale, Az. c. 1960

Architecture + Ecology = ARCOLOGY

In Soleri’s own words an Arcology would be a “highly integrated and compact 3-dimensional urban form that is the opposite of urban sprawl with its inherently wasteful consumption of land, energy and time tending to isolate people from each other and the community”.  

As much as possible, an Arcology would be self-sufficient in water, energy, and essential foodstuffs.  Energy consumption would be minimised and re-cycling systems for water and waste would be fully integrated.   Since there would be no need for cars, walking would be restored as the primary mode of transport.  

HG Wells was possibly the first to conceptualise the idea when, in “The Sleeper Awakes” (1899), the protagonist awakes 200 years in the future to find that all the cities and towns of England had been replaced by a few “stupendous hotels”.   

An Arcology can be defined as “City within a building”, “City under one roof”, or “Enclosed City”.  But just how big should a city be..?  Most cities today are vast sprawling conurbations, usually containing millions of people.  But historically a city could be tiny by today’s standards, as long as it had a great church, a cathedral, like the City of Wells in Somerset.  

Soleri’s idea of hundreds of thousands (even millions) of people in a single mega-structure is not just impractical, but totally un-necessary OVERKILL..!  Not just economically and in structural feasibility, but also in terms of aesthetics, dynamics, social cohesion, and in many other ways.   

Soleri did his own idea a great dis-service by giving the impression that an Arcology had to be GARGANTUAN – impossibly larger than any existing or projected building.     

For a while, in the 1970’s, Soleri and Arcologies were often in the news, but they both slipped off the radar well before concern about “the environment” became the hot topic it is today.   Nowadays, the term “Arcology” is more familiar to sci-fi fans than architects, most of whom have never heard the term.

Ultimately, Soleri’s ideas failed to be taken seriously because, although technically and theoretically brilliant, his designs were so mind-bogglingly ENORMOUS, like “Novanoah 1” below, that there was no possibility of them – or anything similar – becoming a reality in the foreseeable future.

Paolo Soleri’s “Arcologies” were detailed propositions for a new kind of city that has led to the development of the ECO-CITY idea, particularly in terms of compactness and the exclusion of motor vehicles. With distinct physical boundaries, arcologies were designed to have a minimal impact on nature.