ARCOSANTI, ARIZONA

Arcosanti, found in the desert of Arizona, is a prototype urban development by the
visionary architect and planner Paolo Soleri. The site is an experimental “urban
laboratory” where Soleri applies his ideas concerning architecture, ecology, and urban
planning. Born on 21 June 1919 in Turin, Italy, Soleri, shortly after completing Ph.D.
studies in architecture at the Turin Politecnico in 1946, joined Frank Lloyd Wright at
Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, with a
fellowship for 16 months. He immigrated to the United States in 1955 and by 1970 had
completed designs for some 30 “arcologies.”
Soleri uses the term “arcology” for alternative urban habitats (architecture and
ecology). Arcologies are high-density structures that will be capable of containing close
to six million inhabitants. Arcosanti is the 13th of these arcologies, and it was the most
feasible to build. It is a laboratory for a community that conserves energy, land, and raw
materials and is composed of studios, apartments, a swimming pool, a restaurant, cultural
facilities, a casting workshop, a community farm, a sewage pond, and greenhouses.
Soleri, beginning construction at Arcosanti in 1970, has increased the initial projection
of 1,500 inhabitants to 5,000. It is built on the south slope of a canyon on an 860-acre site
at Cordes Junction. Arcosanti lies approximately 65 miles north of Scottsdale, where in
1956 Soleri had begun constructing Cosanti, a nonprofit educational foundation.
Cosanti was built on five acres of land, and it is where Soleri began his experiments in
concrete-casting techniques that were later to be applied at a larger scale at Arcosanti.
Experiments have also been carried out on surface decorations and moldings at Arcosanti
as well as the construction of large vaults and solar apses. Silt from streambeds on the
site was used to create forms for sections of vaults, cast-in-place vaulting, and the precast
wall panels. Silt is used as a parting agent and can be easily carved to produce ribs where
needed. Coloring matter then is applied over the silt and adheres to the concrete along
with some of the silt to create various shades of color and texture. Linoleum sheets are
used for large areas when silt carving is inefficient. They are cut to predetermined shapes
and used to create indentations and transfer color to the concrete. The use of ordinary
wood formwork is used for the pouring of foundations, columns, beams, and slabs. There
Entries A–F 109
are a few floor slabs where silt is used on top of the formwork to create curved, ribbed
undersides.
Soleri has designed advanced solar systems in building structures with assistance from
the University of Arizona. At Cosanti, Soleri also began creating his ceramic wind-bells.
This effort eventually led to the creation of a foundry and workshop on its site for casting
metal bells. The Soleri bells soon became the main income source for Cosanti and, later,
Arcosanti.
There are more than 50,000 annual visitors to Arcosanti who may participate in
workshops and conferences or tour the grounds. The main builders of Arcosanti have
been mainly volunteers, summer student apprentices, and a few employed workers.
The urban planning at Arcosanti takes its stand against suburban sprawl, which Soleri
sees as an extremely destructive force. As an alternative to spread-out cities and suburban
sprawl, Arcosanti is based on a miniaturization of elements into large urban structures.
To Soleri, energy problems are largely the result of suburban sprawl and the use of the
automobile. It is avoiding the use of automobiles and creating a series of ministructures,
not megastructures, that Soleri believes will help create a better prototype for urban
dwelling.
It is Soleri’s notion that cities are vital but that contemporary cities tend to isolate
people from one another and to have transportation systems that are cumbersome and
polluting. Cities also tend to segregate people on the basis of age, race, ethnicity,
occupation, and wealth as well as to create problems such as natural resource depletion,
food scarcity, and a depletion of the quality of life. Arcosanti is designed to include the
positive attributes of an urban environment, such as human interaction, and availability of
consumer goods and services along with integrating these urban qualities in an interaction
with the surrounding desert. When completed, Arcosanti will be 25 stories high. With a
footprint that covers 15 acres of the 860-acre site, it will represent one of the highest
population densities ever known.
The architectural historian Hanno-Walter Kruft claims in A His tory of Architectural Theory: From Vit ruvius to the Pres ent (1994) that Arcosanti
explores an alternative to the functionalist and technologist concerns within architecture
occurring in the United States at the time of its inception. According to Kruft, Arcosanti
is a “transtechnological” Utopian city in which Soleri believes that by improving social
conditions, humankind’s genetic structure would also be improved (p. 439). Like many
modernists, Soleri believes in the morality of architecture: better living conditions
produce better humans. However, following the philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, Soleri
extends this to include humankind’s genetic composition as being effected by better
living conditions. The architectural historian Charles Jencks, in Architecture Today (1982), stated that in
the early 1970s, Soleri’s Arcosanti presented a “highly saturated superurbanism” that
differed from many counter-cultural movements of the time that emphasized a movement
away from the urban environment. Jencks also described Soleri as a late
modernist having similarity with Luis Barragan and John Hejduk in his emphasis on pure
sculptural form .
Soleri insists that Arcosanti is not a megastructure. However, it is a structure after the
architectural tradition of Archigram and Buckminster Fuller. Soleri is similar to Fuller, who discussed the environment and
ecological issues beyond conventional ideas of architecture. However, unlike Fuller’s
tendency to emphasize self-sufficiency and applied technology, Soleri’s ideas on
technology are based on analogies and the belief that a person is never self-sufficient.
Arcosanti today has approximately 100 occupants who still aid Soleri in its
continuation. Its slow growth has been largely caused by lack of funding, but it remains
an experimental city and an alternative to suburban sprawl in the United States.