Architects and engineers are looking for new solutions to environmentally-friendly building, urban planning, and energy use. But Paolo Soleri, who was born June 21, 1919, was there decades ago.
He was born in Turin, Italy, studied architecture, and in the mid-1940s spent more than a year in a fellowship at Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture school in Arizona and Wisconsin. He returned to Italy where he designed a large ceramics factory, and in the process learned a great deal about ceramics. Then in 1956 he returned to the US and settled in Arizona, where he started building an experimental community he called Arcosanti.
He called his work “arcology,” a combination of architecture and ecology, and designed Arcosanti (which is still there; it’s an actual town) to minimize resource use, maximize access to the natural environment, and yet provide a very dense urban-like living space.
Soleri’s designs are similar to those of his mentor Frank Lloyd Wright, in trying to incorporate everything needed by residents right from the start. He was never quite as diligent as Wright about built-in furniture, though.
People live in Arcosanti, and although many of them are architects (the place offers courses and workshops), the main income for the town comes from the bells and ceramics they make and sell. Soleri started the ceramics business decades back, using what he’d learned in Italy.
Soleri celebrated his 90th birthday at Arcosanti in 2009, after which he retired. He lived another three years at Arcosanti. You can see the place by traveling there, of course, but you can also watch the 1988 science fiction film Nightfall. It was filmed there, and most of the extras in the movie are Arcosanti residents. Unfortunately, Nightfall is not regarded as a very good movie. But the sets, designed by Paolo Soleri, are great.
