Jeff Stein
President, Cosanti Foundation
Abstract: Cities and over half the world’s population living in and around them, are now clearly an integral part of earth’s ecology. Arcosanti, the urban experiment founded 40 years ago by architect Paolo Soleri in the Arizona desert, would place cities at the very center of that ecology, at the very center of the web of life on earth.
While those who can afford it continue to trade nature for buildings and their energy needs, Soleri and his Cosanti Foundation have been investigating something very different for more than a generation. That exploration – and its accompanying construction work – continues to promote and develop an urban form (Arcology: Architecture and Ecology) that could foster interdependence and social and ecological well-being through density, frugality and a profound awareness of place. Meant to embody a holistic understanding of the city as a scalable organism, Arcosanti’s intent is to focus the twin evolutionary forces of miniaturization and complexity on the problem of urban design.
Jeff Stein AIA, President of the Cosanti Foundation, the urban research institute responsible for Arcosanti’s continued design and construction, discusses the project’s possible influence on a generation of architects, scientists, planners and city lovers.
SFI Host: Geoffrey West
Comments