The Legacy "Arcológico" by Paolo Soleri
With an average of 35.000 visitors per year, Arcosanti − an alternative to urban expansion based on Soleri's theory of compact design of cities, and which he baptized with the term of arcology − preserves the essence of its creator, who besides architect and Urban designer was an artist, craftsman and philosopher. This laboratory sought to create a space of harmony between man and nature in the middle of the desert.
The Italian architect Paolo Soleri (1919-2013), a renowned icon of the counter-culture, was also a visionary character in the field of urbanism. It coined the term "arcology" a combination of architecture and ecology, and under this concept conceived "Arcosanti", a sort of urban experiment built in the Arizona desert.
Soleri was born in Turin, Italy and studied at the Politecnico di Torino where he obtained the Master degree in 1946. Shortly thereafter, he traveled to the United States to study in Taliesin with Master Frank Lloyd Wright. His affinity with Master Wright is clear that both had an ecological approach to the development of architecture and urbanism, however, while Wright proposed a utopian design for Broadacre City as an extension of the city, Soleri in Arcosanti proposed the opposite: an urban implosion where cities densificaban to leave the rural areas intact.
Arcosanti − located in Mayer, a village in Yavapai County − more than a prototype that came to be built, is a system of understanding of human life and its footprint on the Earth, which was conceived taking into account the relationship between the city and the aspirations of its H Inhabitants. Since its founding in 1970 it has been consolidated as a laboratory focused on innovative designs with environmental responsibility that attracts hundreds of students from all over the world every year to join their various workshops and programs. It is also considered a hotbed for hundreds of architects who continue the vision of this great thinker. It was built with the support of more than 7.000 volunteers since the start of the project, and offers several mixed-use buildings and public spaces, where participants in a five-week intensive workshop live and work.
His workshops teach the principles of arcology, which are later carried out in various works in the locality. Residents work on planning, design, construction, agriculture, landscaping, carpentry and file maintenance aspects. They also elaborate the internationally recognized bells, called Soleri Windbells, and which are the main source of revenue that keeps the project.
Jeff Stein, co-president of the Cosanti Foundation and who met Soleri in 1975, decided to follow in the footsteps of the visionary architect, and is one of the people who currently preserves his legacy:
"We manufacture about 300 bells of bronze and clay a month, which represents 62% of the revenues that maintain the architectural project. The residents prepare them in view of the visitors in the workshop that was designed by Soleri, "he explained.
For all of the above, more than a project that merges ecology and architecture, it is a vision built, an affirmation that other forms of life really committed to the human and its environment, may be possible.
By laureate Martínez Figueroa