BYWAYS PLUS: DATES! - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

The "work area" is closely linked to dining areas and apartments. The floor can be cleared for basketball, volleyball or badminton.
It seems like a good idea for students but not a very efficient
way to build a city. Every five weeks, nine months a
year, 200-300 new, inexperienced, flabby, soft kids show up
to be taught how to pour preformed concrete molds, build a
block wall or to learn the working end of a shovel.
"Two per cent is finished," Soleri says. "We have many
miles to go. We must market our product, raise funds, research,
study our mistakes and our progress, and go on."
The Cosanti Foundation receives no help from any public agencies.
To meet the yearly budget that hovers between
$25O,OOO-$5OO,OOO, Soleri lectures in the U.S. and abroad; his
books "Arcology:City in the Image of Man," "The
Sketchbooks of Paolo Soleri," and "Matter Becoming
Spirit," are sold at both Cosanti in Scottsdale and at the construction
site of Arcosanti; donations are accepted for tours of
Arcosanti. Also Soleri bells are sold, and students are
charged tuition for their five-week seminars in construction.
"It's a very difficult task," Soleri acknowledges. "But it
must be done."
Why must it be done? Soleri suggests we look at our cities
for the answer. Phoenix is 20 miles wide and 50 miles long;
Los Angeles is spread out all over the place, Dallas too.
People live close to each other in Daley City, but they are not
connected to each other in very many ways. At Arcosanti
The Desert Magazine/March 1980
everything is connected to the idea that the more complex the
organism the less space it requires. So the apses of the
foundry and the ceramics studio can also be performing
shells, theaters, dance floors, work areas, and so can the
construction arches. They all are southern facing so that the
high, hot summer sun puts the shells in shadow, and the
lower spring, fall, and especially winter sun of Arizona fills
the shells with light and warmth. In the foundry apse,
windows of beehive-like apartments with sufficient room for
everyone (approximately 500 sq. ft. per person) are built into
the ground that supports the apse. It's all connected, tightly.
When it is finished, Elevators and escalators will be the main
sources of transportation from work to home to pleasure.
' 'Our belief in this prototype of the future city supports the
notion of complexity," Soleri says. "We are complex beings.
So is the bee who lives his life connected to the hive. Our task
is to transcribe the complexity of the hive into human terms.''
So who wants to live in any city, right? Well, if a recent
study by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
is correct when it states that by the year 2,000 the
world population will be 6.2 billion (currently 4.5 billion) and
that half of the world's population will be living in cities, then
one of us, you or I, dear reader, will live in a city. How do you
want that city to be?
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