Artist and Architect
A visionary ahead of his time
Born in 1919 in Turin, Italy, architect Paolo Soleri came to the US in 1947 to study under Frank Lloyd Wright. Soleri and Wright had vastly different views on the shape American cities should take; Wright favored the sprawling “Broadacre City” concept, while Soleri envisioned an “urban implosion”: a compact and vertically dense environment that emphasized people’s connection to one another and to nature.
Following his year and a half studying with Wright at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Soleri received the first of only two commissions in his career to design and build a private home.
Dome House, a futuristic home in Cave Creek, Arizona, was completed in 1952.
Soon after, Soleri accepted a commission to build The Ceramica Artistica Solimene, a ceramics factory on Italy’s Amalfi coast, where he first learned the craft of ceramics.
Returning to Arizona in 1955, Soleri and his wife settled on a 5-acre parcel north of Phoenix for Cosanti, his architectural and design studio. Using ceramics skills from the Solimene factory, he began making earth-cast ceramic windbells — still produced at Cosanti Originals using the same methods.
In 1965 Paolo started The Cosanti Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to influencing the way the built world is created in balance with the environment.
Arcosanti: Soleri’s best-known experiment
His revolutionary philosophy of “arcology,” a portmanteau of architecture and ecology, is the theory for which Paolo Soleri is best known. His landmark 1969 book, Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, written at Cosanti, became the catalyst for Arcosanti, the experimental micro-city midway between Phoenix and Sedona.
Inspired by Soleri’s progressive arcology theory, Arcosanti has been built and inhabited over 50 years by thousands of volunteers. Dubbed “the urban laboratory” by New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable in the mid-1970s, it remains an experiment, both social and structural. Its residents demonstrate how to live in a place designed to be multi-functional, vertical, and compact, using natural resources more wisely.
Soleri received an AIA Gold Medal, the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, and the Smithsonian Medal for Lifetime Achievement, among other honors. He died in 2013 at the age of 94 in his home at Cosanti. Scholars, architects, and urban planners continue to visit Cosanti and Arcosanti and find inspiration in his arcology philosophy.
Arcology
The term “arcology” — a blending of architecture and ecology — was Soleri’s approach to urban planning that brings people closer to each other and closer to nature through thoughtfully designed architecture. The architectural examples at Arcosanti exemplify this theory both by being situated amidst a barren, largely unspoiled landscape, and through structures designed to be minimalist and multi-use.
Continuously inhabited since 1970 by those who have built its structures and societal infrastructure, today Arcosanti attracts urban planners, architects, and scholars who are inspired by its origin story and marvel that through determination, learning-by-doing, and a willingness to dare for something different, thousands of amateur architects could create an alternative way of life that is materially frugal but experientially enriched.