Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti and the Limits of Utopia
Figure 1. The main building at Arcosanti, one of the few completed, where visitors and staff gather to eat, dine, and shop. The concrete tower and floor-to-ceiling windows are a desert anomaly. Without any façades for shading, the building requires energy-intensive cooling methods that are at odds with Soleri’s fantasy of an “environmentally sound” utopia. Photograph by Emily Sandstrom, 2021.
The United States has a complicated history of failed utopian communities. In the peaceful Sonoran Desert, an hour north of Phoenix, Arizona, lies one of the most infamous in living memory: architect Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti. A taupe, space-age fever dream of symmetrical vertical structures, fitted with circular paned windows and sweeping domes, this experiment in quasi-urban habitat, occupying fourteen square miles, embodied Soleri’s radical and futuristic vision for an environmentally sustainable, collectively organized ecosystem. It also underscores the challenges of realizing novel forms of community, especially when the product of a lone visionary.
The architect’s reimagining of the American city was nothing if not ambitious. But he insisted that his plan would be realized, and livable. When he published it in 1969 in his book, Arcology: City in the Image of Man, the mesa desert development’s promise, and its formal and aesthetic qualities, drew considerable fanfare from students, architects, and the countercultural and environmental movements. With intentional and back-to-the-land communities flourishing across the United States, and with the help of devoted students and volunteers, Arcosanti broke ground in 1970.
Figure 2. The siltcast workshop area, overlooking the scenic mesa desert. The small community of artists and volunteers who presently occupy Arcosanti relies heavily on the sale of crafts and ceramic bells produced on the site, such as these. Photograph by Emily Sandstrom, 2021.
But fifty years later, the democratic desert utopia is mostly a ghost-like construction site. Only five percent complete, it is chiefly a tourist curiosity and music venue. The small cluster of completed buildings serves as temporary homes for approximately fifty people, a transient flux of volunteers, interns, and a few who previously had occupied the original housing quarters, which have since been turned into Airbnbs.
How did something with so much support, and so deeply reflective of the cultural zeitgeist, fail so dismally? For answers, we must look beyond the mesmerizing sketches and utopian principles. Soleri’s vision and execution, it turns out, were laden with contradictions. And the man himself? Visionary, for sure, but also an egotistical megalomaniac dedicated above all else to maintaining a cult-like following.
Figure 3. The main building where visitors are welcomed, sits in isolation, at the end of a long service road. The paved walkways that connect the whole site begin here. Photograph by Emily Sandstrom, 2021.
Soleri’s proposal was timely, addressing growing concerns about urban entropy, democracy, and degradation of the natural environment. With democratic, collective living as a guiding principle, he conceived the project to embody his concept of “Arcology,” a portmanteau of architecture and ecology. The plan was a riposte to suburban sprawl and automobile dependency, which he spoke vehemently against, as Antoine Vigne has written. Many of the sketches for Arcosanti emphasize walkability, and it was critical to Soleri that the place interact with its ecosystem in a sustainable fashion. In governance, he imagined that “Arcological citizens would evolve ‘collectivized brains’ that functioned similarly to ‘the organic individual’ who is not only a mechanism in the service of its own component cells” but contributes to a sum greater than any individual parts.
Figure 4. Decorative bells made by staff (top right) are displayed below the magnificent circular paned window in the dining area of the main building. The interior features the same concrete pour used in all of the buildings at Arcosanti. The sun floods in and heats the concrete, retaining its heat into the night. Photograph by Emily Sandstrom, 2021.
Yet there was a distinct disconnect between Soleri’s parables and his methods. His ostensibly anti-capitalist project depended on arduous building methods, primarily silt-casting and, for larger-scale structures, pouring precast slabs. These labor-intensive techniques, Larry Busbea writes, were executed exclusively by unpaid students and volunteers, to avoid unnecessary financial and material waste. According to students, the project was full of conflict and tension, and progress was agonizingly slow, largely because Soleri was often absent. Once work had begun, he was rarely on site more than once a week.
Figure 5. Soleri used circular windows and cut outs to frame a scenic relationship with the landscape. He also included small terraces for staff to gather. Photograph by Emily Sandstrom, 2021.
Worse yet, Soleri was disdainful of his free help. When problems were aired, he complained “there is this sudden explosion of wisdom of babies. They try to spew out sentences before they know of anything, instead of being humble.”[1] And when asked whether staff would be more productive if they had the opportunity to contribute to the design process he said, recalls James Shipsky, “If they want to design their own arcology, let them buy their own mesa and build on it. But not here.” Behind the idealistic communitarian was an egomaniac with an impractical vision.
“Arcosanti amounts to little more than a hypnotizing and unfinished desert expo, a shrine to Soleri himself.”
Figure 6. The colorful dome roof of the Foundry, which stands over the individual offices where artists make their crafts. Photograph by Emily Sandstrom, 2021.
Dolores Hayden, in her 1976 book Seven American Utopias, commented on this gap between myth and man, critiquing the God-like status Soleri claimed for himself and his “authoritarian process.” When orchestrated and planned by a sole individual, she wrote, new communities could never prosper or retain their democratic ideals. As for the slow progress? “Like those historical communities whose designs were said to come from God, one cannot expect much growth. . . . When ‘God’ — or Soleri — stops giving orders.” Still, many of Soleri’s acolytes stayed loyal to him, including counter-cultural environmentalists — despite his dismissal of them as misguided hippies and “naked apes.”[2]
Figure 7. The East Crescent includes the amphitheater, where concerts at Arcosanti are held. Surrounding the theater are the dormitories for volunteers and staff. Photograph by Emily Sandstrom, 2021.
Soleri’s true colors beg the question, how committed was he to his agenda? How much of his politics was rhetoric in the service of architectural ambition? A manipulation to generate a cult-like following? Meanwhile, his unfinished experiment reminds us of the limitations of all utopian schemes. Today, Arcosanti amounts to little more than a hypnotizing and unfinished desert expo, a shrine to Soleri himself. To make real change, architects must put their talents to work improving existing cities. A Phoenix more democratic, more in harmony with the desert, and less reliant on the car? Now that would be radical.
Notes
[1] Marc Ramirez, “Paolo Soleri's Vision Of City of Future Remains a Dream,” Wall Street Journal, August 14, 1989.
[2]Soleri, Paolo. The Bridge Between Matter and Spirit Is Matter Becoming Spirit: The Arcology of Paolo Soleri. (Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1973).
Citation
Emily Sandstrom, “Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti and the Limits of Utopia,” PLATFORM, April 25, 2022.
