“the most famous architect who never built anything” (according to his critics)

Born in Turin, Soleri migrated to the USA is 1946 and, for a while was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, until they fell out over Wright’s advocacy of low-rise sprawl housing, which Soleri rightly detested.   In the 50s he and his wife moved to Arizona and founded Cosanti, a studio complex where he worked until he died.  In the late 60s, he developed the concept of “arcology,” a portmanteau of architecture and ecology – a built environment that worked with, instead of against, nature.  In 1970 he founded Arcosanti, an experimental city where he intended to put his somewhat utopian ideas to the test with the help of volunteer architectural students and devotees.

In a 3-dimensional city, man has made a city in his own image, and he becomes a country dweller and a metropolitan man at the same time.   “Arcology: The City in the Image of Man” (MIT 1969)

The problem is the present design of cities only a few stories high, stretching outward in unwieldy sprawl for miles.  This sprawl literally transform the earth, turn farms into parking lots and wastes enormous amounts of time and energy transporting people, goods and services over their expanses.

Arcology recognizes the necessity of the radical reorganization of the sprawling urban landscape into dense, integrated, 3d cities in order to support the complex activities that sustain human culture.

The city is the necessary instrument for the evolution of humankind.

The cities we build should be like pianos, and their inhabitants musicians.  But we need good musicians, or the pianos are wasted   

The landscape has become a gigantic domain of the car and this dictates how we behave.    

“We have become hyper consumers possessed by materialism, buying our happiness,”  

“Materialism is, by definition, the antithesis of green.”     

Consumer confidence is inversely proportional to waste reduction

Excessive consumption, per se, is no more than a hindrance.    But multiply that hindrance by billions, and you’ve got catastrophe.  

‘Developer: it starts with ‘D,’ like ‘devil’ and ‘demon,’   

“If someone had said fifty years ago that I would finance the building of Arcosanti from the proceeds of windbell sales, I would have told them they are crazy.” 

“Arcosanti’s residences are tiny as monks cells and almost as frugal”  – Australian “Beyond 2000” reporter – a very popular and long-running TV science show in the 1980’s.  

THE CITY IS THE CRADLE AND THE EXPRESSION OF CIVILISATION