Arcosanti's topics - tribe.net

how do you know about Arco?

Desiree — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 18:18:40 GMT

Hi, I just joined this community a few days ago. I've been to Arco only a couple of times, but am fascinated by it -- and my fiancee, Nathan, lived there for 4 & 1/2 yrs. I'm going to begin pursuing my degree in Community Development in the Urban Planning dep't at Portland State U. in the fall, and ways of promotion density are very important to me. Has anyone in this tribe participated in the Group Motion contact improv dance workshops that are held at Arco every August? I went to one a couple of yrs ago, and it was a wonderful experience, and would love to do it again this year if I can afford the trip. Anyway, that's all... just wanted to introduce myself and would love to hear about how other members of this tribe are connected to Arcosanti.

posted in Arcosanti - 14 replies

Underground portion of Amsterdam planned

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:19:27 GMT

http://www.building.co.uk/story_attachment.asp?storycode=3105825&seq=2&type=P&c=1
another Megastructure idea is considered by region!

posted in Arcosanti - 1 reply

Seascape one

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:06:39 GMT

Looks like someone is getting ready to really do this!
http://www.seascape1.com/Vision2.html

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

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posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

Introductions

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 14:49:38 GMT

Hi there folks.

I've been living in Flagstaff for a couple of years, not too far from Arcosanti. I kept driving by it and finally had to pull over and check it out. I've gone on the tour a couple of times and find it all fascinating.

What about you all. What's your interest in this place? Has anyone here taken the course and lived at arcosanti?

posted in Arcosanti - 28 replies

Arcology: Solution for the Information Age? Written by Ivan B. Schonfeld

indiaijaya — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 02:18:39 GMT

http://www.geocities.com/arcology_IT/chapter4.htm

http://www.geocities.com/arcology_IT/index.html

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

WE THE PEOPLE

indiaijaya — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:22:15 GMT

A

"WE THE PEOPLE"
interview with

Paolo Soleri
and
Jerry Brown

The following transcript is of a two day interview of Paolo Soleri broadcast on Jerry Brown's nationally syndicated talkshow, "We the People." The program aired on 12/9/95 and 12/11/95. An open and closed parenthesis,(), indicates a loss of information in the process of transcribing the interview.
DAY 1 : Part | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
DAY 2 : Part | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

DAY 1 : PART 1

JB: Welcome to another edition of "We the People". This hour we have a very special guest from Arizona, Paolo Soleri, an author, a visionary, an architect, a pioneer of new human spaces. He's the author of Arcosanti, an Urban Laboratory, the book Technology and Cosmogenesis, the Arcology, the City in the Image of Man, the Omega Seed, and that's got a logical hypothesis. I first met Paolo Soleri many, many years ago when he was visiting California, and I went to Arcosanti, which is a...I'm going to let him describe this incredible...Words take it away from me. Paolo, welcome to the show! Please describe Arcosanti for me.

PS: Good afternoon, and thank you for the great introduction.

JB: And I just want to say to those who do not know Paolo Soleri, he was one of the students of Frank Lloyd Wright. He came over here from Italy after World War II, and he's been working...I guess more or less permanently seventy miles from Scottsdale building his dream right in several thousand acres at about an elevation of 3,000 feet in the Arizona desert. Now, take it from there, Paolo.

PS: Well, we have been attempting the last twenty years at least to develop something that may be persuasive in the north to introduce society to an idea which is a very old idea overseeing man congregating into what we call towns, cities and metropolitan systems. So it is a very old story, the fact that the city is the title of civilization. Civilization, the term itself says that there's no separation between the appearance of the cities and the development of civilizations

JB: So the cities are tied into civilization...

PS: Yes.

JB: And yet there is a destructive element right along with it, because it certainly seems like the city, at least in modern times in so many places, is very hostile to civilization. If by that we mean something that's elegant and creative and beautiful and pleasurable.

PS: Well, that's somehow the pathology of the city, and every phenomena some pathologies, so we should be careful to discriminate between what the notion of the city can offer and what it's offering for us for millenniums, and which we are now making the city into which is very much what you are saying an environment which is not very conducive to, what you might call, the good society. The fact remains that if we eliminate all the cities from this continent, what remains is not much. In fact, even though we Americans tend to be very skeptical about the presence of the city, we must recognize that the city is still the place where things are happening in scale and in quality which is very real otherwise.

JB: That's interesting that things where they are happening in scale and quality, and yet cities receive such a low estimation, not only by people in government, but by the policies and by the fact that people are moving away from cities, and have been doing so for almost thirty years.

PS: Yeah, I think that's a horrendous mistake, and maybe to give a glimpse to what I'm saying, let me try to come up with some kind of metaphor. We know that the population of the globe is doubling from 5 billion a few years ago, we are going to be 10 billions by the year 2050 or so. So that means that whatever the stress is upon the planet that we put upon the...or need now...will be double by the doubling of the population. So that would mean that in reality that we would be needing the equivalent of two planets by the year 2050. Then, we Americans have the American dream to implement. Well, if we implement the American dream and we take that other...the other module for the planet, then the American dream would be a planetary dream, and that would be very much in tune with the notion of democracy, of justice, or equality, and so on. So if that was going to happen, then we must multiple the two planets we need, because of the doubling of the population by 20, that's what we Americans consume compared to the average population. So, we would be in need of 40 planets by the year 2050, if the American dreams become the planetary dream.

JB: So what you're really saying is that we as Americans are modeling a way of life that takes either forty times...will by the time we get more people...forty more planets...

PS: Yes...

JB: ...or we cut our standard of living by forty.

PS: That's a sore point. Unless we moderate, unless we re-invent the American dream in terms of the physiology of it, then it's not going to be a dream, it's going to be doomsday, and naturally, we wouldn't get to that point, because many other things would happen, but one thing that would happen was going to be an enormous increase in suffering, in separation, in isolation, in segregation, in xenophobia, and the list can go on and on. Because the planet, for the first time in the history of this planet in the history of mankind, the planet appears as the main, one of the main actors in the play, because its limitations now are becoming evident and we cannot ignore these very clear and very substantial fact that we cannot demand from the planet whatever we please, so what we need is to take the American dream and frugalize it to be able to make it into something that instead of being geared to the finality of materialese and edenese, and so on, should become more oriented toward the inner life of individuals and societies. You might need less of the physical in order to produce more of the mental and the spiritual.

from the Arcosanti.org website

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

photos of Arcosanti

sterlingsf — Fri, 07 May 2004 01:46:05 GMT

Here's my photos from Arcosanti in Feb 2002. Anyone else have snaps to share?

http://www.modern-nomads.com/arcosanti/index.htm

cheers,

-lane

posted in Arcosanti - 2 replies

Paolo Soleri to speak in Tempe, AZ

blazenhoff — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 04:42:12 GMT

From the Changing Hands Bookstore site (http://www.changinghands.com):

Time: Friday, September 23, 2005 6:30 PM
Location: Changing Hands Bookstore
Title of Event: AN EVENING WITH PAOLO SOLERI

Italian Architectural Laureate and director of the Cosanti Foundation, Paolo Soleri, presents "Lean Alternative," a talk detailing various alternatives to urban sprawl. He will also sign his books, including one about Arcosanti and his only definitive biography by Iolanda Lima.

General seating for all events begins one hour before the event. Booksigning ticket numbers (available with book purchase) will be called to fill seats. Although not guaranteed, arriving early with this ticket is the best way to be assured a seat.

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

Bay area to Arco road trip?

kevinevans — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 18:09:58 GMT

spring/summer? camp on the river in Sedona?

posted in Arcosanti - 19 replies

so what is it all about?

jJ*umping Gypsy* — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 04:36:53 GMT

Im a curious flagstaff folk who would like to know the premise of arcosanti...
thanks and gratitude!

posted in Arcosanti - 1 reply

kinetic sculpture question

ravicher — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 20:02:14 GMT

a little birdie told me that there is someone in the arcosanti community that does kinetic sculptures. I could use a little advice on small electric motors for an optical illusion that I've been working on.

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

check out this

indiaijaya — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 11:53:45 GMT

http://www.ecosyn.us/Welcome/11/index.html
look familiar?

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

echos of Hadrian's Villa at Arco

Incinerama — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 20:48:21 GMT

Hmm, I visited what's left of Hadrian's villa near Tivoli, Italy last Spetember, and looking now on the apses and vaults of Arco, I see the resemblance. Perhaps it's in Paolo's racial memory?

Of course, Hadrian was building a place for himself, but he did have a few hundred servants and slaves, and a fondness for
gymnasia, baths, and his male lover Antinous. He was a Renaissance man 1300 years before the renaissance. He also executed the Imperial architect who compared his designs to pumpkins.

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

new photos--who made them?

marshallelliott — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 06:37:54 GMT

I just put a couple new photos up here of art at arcosanti. If anyone knows who made these, I'd like to know. Especially the rock & steel piece.

To what extent does environment affect creativity?

-m

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

arcosanti bronze tiles

kevinevans — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 15:49:09 GMT

see 'em?

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

Arcology

kevinevans — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 22:57:00 GMT

Arcology is Paolo Soleri's concept of cities which embody the fusion of architecture with ecology. The arcology concept proposes a highly integrated and compact three-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. The complexification and miniaturization of the city enables radical conservation of land, energy and resources.

An arcology would need about two percent as much land as a typical city of similar population. Today’s typical city devotes more than sixty percent of its land to roads and automobile services. Arcology eliminates the automobile from within the city. The multi-use nature of arcology design would put living, working and public spaces within easy reach of each other and walking would be the main form of transportation within the city.

An arcology’s direct proximity to uninhabited wilderness would provide the city dweller with constant immediate and low-impact access to rural space as well as allowing agriculture to be situated near the city, maximizing the logistical efficiency of food distribution systems. Arcology would use passive solar architectural techniques such as the apse effect, greenhouse architecture and garment architecture to reduce the energy usage of the city, especially in terms of heating, lighting and cooling. Overall, arcology seeks to embody a “Lean Alternative” to hyper consumption and wastefulness through more frugal, efficient and intelligent city design.

Arcology theory holds that this leanness is obtainable only via the miniaturization intrinsic to the Urban Effect, the complex interaction between diverse entities and organisms which mark healthy systems both in the natural world and in every successful and culturally significant city in history.

from arcosanti.org

posted in Arcosanti - 2 replies

“The Search for a Lean Alternative”

indiaijaya — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 01:02:10 GMT

“The Search for a Lean Alternative”
Written by Paolo Soleri
edited by Jewel Blackfeather
(excerpt from a paper to be published by the ASU press)
Is Arcosanti, a Lean Alternative?
The Lean Alternative (LA) is a challenge to the
marketplace. Given the relative size and power of Arcosanti, the
challenge is minuscule, ephemeral. That is one reason why being
absorbed by the market now is unwise. One tenet is that
prototyping is not profit oriented. It ceases to be prototyping the
moment it enters the straight jacket of profitability and its strict
rules of “I’ll do it if it pays,” because the pay is to be granted and
fast coming, stifling the Alternative because the Alternative is not
proven. If proven, the Lean Alternative would be no longer open
to the nimbleness of novelty; it would have skirted the risk of
challenging the market. If the market is the youngest of
theologies, challenging, it equals blasphemy. Adieu, alternative.
The intention is good, but the results will be the absorption
of the Lean Alternative into the marketplace. It is the “Let me tell
you” and then, “let me show you” procedure that the market
establishes on the site. Prototyping, laboratory, and leanness are
put aside or astutely absorbed, diluted in the marketable
commodity. As the non-marketable commodity, the alternative is
automatically discarded.
We are prototyping nutcrackers, sewing machines, artificial
hearts, lung machines, refineries, submarines, space probes,
telephones, vaccines, computing machines, soup cans, chairs,
soaps, wireless, electric razors—you name it. For all, trial and
error have been the originators or bottlenecks to success, when
success cometh.
The country spends billions of dollars on a super bomber
that never reaches the assembly line and billions in space probes
going nowhere. We have been prototyping habitat for thousands
of years, but in taking the most complicated and most complex
problem of all, the production of culture inside habitat, we have
been less than coherent. We must try and try again, but we must
be more focused and less shortsighted. At stake are the lives of
billions of people and the considerate symbiosis with the life that
made and makes us: the biosphere. We need urban laboratories.
We must prototype. Haphazardness on the base of “I do what I
like if I can get away with it” is inching closer and closer to
irresponsibility in the name of freedom, democracy, happiness, and
Utopia (the great fiction?).
Since Arcosanti is the place for the alternative, the
marketplace must adapt to it and not vice versa—that is, Arcosanti
becoming a successful commodity for the marketplace. To pay lip
service to the Lean Alternative and then go the marketplace way
does not help anything or anybody. It is muda (waste).
There is something between the clumsiness of Arcosanti
and the slickness of loans redeemed. This something is the access,
genuine, into the lean prototyping with all the unproven, untested
ambiguities of prototyping.
The market would have never accepted, endorsed, or
financed the Old Town (the existing structures). The mesa would
be there, pristine and untouched if we persevered in trying to bring
the market. None of the four to five thousand people that built the
Arcosanti Old Town asked for stocks, ownership, guarantees,
public debate, or a decision-making voice. They came, worked,
and left. I think none of the workshoppers/residents came out the
worse for it. Now, we have a working fragment of a Lean
Alternative. It should not yet be drowned in the oceanic
marketplace. (And, by the way, the Evolutionary Coherence
Bubble is probably with us.) While the market wants to convert
us, we only want to suggest an alternative to the market. The
market, as it does in science, technology, medicine, education,
sociology, industry, and so forth should help (finance) us, not for
profit, but for understanding, learning, and knowledge, not to
mention an insurance policy. Let’s be real! You accept, work for,
and endorse the Lean Alternative, or you pay lip service to it. This
is evidently not a sin, just indifference.
The Cosanti/Arcosanti project has been a modest
attempt to become a testing ground for lean society. We have
been at it for about forty years. The only help from society
comes from being a not-for-profit project.
We had to generate resources for constructing the inthe-
making town, Arcosanti, while residents—averaging
seventy people—carried on with dignity and some rewarding
experiences. The awareness of being in a domain of excellence
vis-à-vis waste, pollution, environmental disruption, and
disavowing segregation of people and things has been the
constant reward. We’d like to submit a proposal for
accelerating Arcosanti’s construction to corporate and noncorporate
America. Speeding up Arcosanti’s construction
would produce more persuasive alternatives to the problems of
hyper-consumption and materialism, which are inseparable
twins. Extending the experience of lean culture from one
hundred (or so) people to a thousand (or so) people is the main
goal; a thousand or so people is Arcosanti Critical Mass.
At the Arcosanti Lab, we are dealing with an alternative
way of sheltering individuals and society. Why is it sheltering?
Because what we have elected to be the optimal sheltering,
suburbia now mutating into exurbia, is rapidly destroying our
physical and mental resources. The word rapidly is used because
the self-perpetuating labor of technology, inventiveness, and our
innate greed (opportunism) are conjuring the planetary hermitage
we might find, too late, to be lethal. Self-isolation—only virtually
broken by the microchip—is what the gregarious, convivial bodybrains
that we are, will be unable to cope with. The environmental
impact generated by the most extraordinary waste intrinsic to the
one-house-one-family will overwhelm people, animals, and the
green life on which all other forms of life depend: a planetary
muda on the production line.
Arcosanti has forty years of work and thirty years of lean
experience, which we like to propose as an alternative to hyperconsumerism.
To expedite the work and strengthen the
experience, we invite the academic world to participate in the
process. We, the Cosanti Foundation, are willing to explore a
long-term use of Arcosanti and its land’s holding for committed
participation in the Lean Alternative Laboratory of Arcosanti.
Express your interest via mail, fax, or E-mail, and we will send
you more information.
Lean Alternative Network
The Lean Alternative Network would be an offshoot of
the Arcosanti project now intent on developing the Lean
Alternative Laboratory of Arcosanti; it appeals to individuals
or groups converted to the idea that conditions are ripening for
the universal proposal that lean society is an alternative to
hyper-consumptive society.
Lean society is a realistic proposition that could
embrace have and have-not alike. Lean society is
evolutionarily more coherent than the hyper-consumption
society. Evolution might well be poised for an unparalleled
acceleration, courtesy of learning and doing’s new
technologies.
That is why a true concern for desirability—even at
feasibility’s expense—is gaining an urgency not known, if and
where survival’s constraints marginalize the human condition.
Now, we are reaching the threshold of food, shelter and
education for all people. We are far away from equity’s
threshold.
Lean society could be lethal for greed and materialism
by de-contaminating single people and groups of people. Decontamination
fights the over-stuffing that’s besieged our
environments and minds. Leanness is agile, quasi-mercurial,
sensitized, and alert about the always-precarious condition of
people that gets buried in materialism’s obesity.
Arcosanti has displayed a sampling of leanness in its
thirty years of experience. Inviting groups of people to get a
five (or more) day experience onsite is the Lean Alternative
Network’s main task. The program is made of discreet groups
of ten to fifty people being briefed and made part of
Arcosanti’s life, existing characters, and potential virtues.
The program, in tandem with press and Internet, can
generate the network indispensable for faster development of
the lean habitat, making it more persuasive and consequently,
more influential. The Lean Alternative Laboratory of
Arcosanti could reach the Critical Mass within a decade and
possibly trigger similar initiatives in diverse lands and
circumstances.
The Lean Alternative imperative is as significant in
consumerist countries as it is in have-not countries. In
consumerist countries, the Lean Alternative needs to abate
consumerist aggression. That is, the have countries should
spare the have-nots from hyper-consumption’s ills and
excesses that are the mirage of the have countries. The planet
at large would be the winner.

posted in Arcosanti - 0 replies

Apropos of nada

sfslim — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 18:29:55 GMT

I once heard that "Palo Alto" translated as "high stick" or "tall twig" or somesuch.

Not quite as poetic, nor as ambitious as Arcosanti, but there you have it.

Yours truly,

Arcosanti Claws