I'D stopped to
use the bathroom at the McDonald's three miles from Arcosanti,
the famously never-finished experimental city in the Arizona
desert. This is cactus country, an arid hour north of Phoenix,
and the McDonald's and Arcosanti were the most
prominent outposts of civilization for miles. I asked the woman at the register
what she'd heard of the place.
Very bad, very bad. The people there ... she trailed
off, searching for a word that might capture the terribleness. "I've heard
it's a cult."
Sold.
To emerge from
the massive, improbable strip mall that is Phoenix, after all, is to suspect
the species needs a new plan, and soon. Sprawl stretches interminably.
Sustainable growth, as an issue, suddenly feels palpable; you're parched and
not seeing a lot of water around. The radio admonishes bored teenagers against
using meth.
To finally crunch
over the three-mile dirt road near Cordes Junction
and arrive at this dusty alternative well, it's a breath of hot, desert air.
At first
approach, the skyline a pair of
concrete apses, a network of modular concrete dwellings, a
rusty old crane fails to make much
of an impact. But it swells with the dream behind it. The Italian architect
Paolo Soleri, a former student of Frank
Lloyd Wright, began construction of this ecologically harmonious
community in 1970.
With its radical
conservation techniques and a brilliantly scrunched-together layout, Arcosanti was intended to reinvent not just the city, but
also man's relationship to the planet: picture a 60s vision of a Mars colony,
but with a cutting-edge, eco-friendly design. Evaporative cooling pools release
moisture into the air. In winter, heat from the foundry furnace is collected by
a hood and sent through the apartments above.
And there are
always apartments above, or a library below, or another set of rooms just
beyond those Italian cypresses. Through a carefully managed density, the impact
is minimal, and the idea of community is reimagined.
In 1976, Newsweek
declared: As urban architecture, Arcosanti is probably the most important experiment
undertaken in our lifetime. Undertaken being
the key word then and now.
Completion has legendarily eluded Arcosanti. Built in
stages and chronically underfinanced, the place exists in a permanent state of
half-doneness.
What was once the
future of intelligently designed communities has morphed into something less
optimistic: a stalled revolution in urban planning or a moldering relic of
impractical idealism, depending on whom you ask. Often
enough it's referred to as Mr. Soleri's desert
utopia, and as with all utopias, reality doesn't always match the
blueprints.
And
yet.
The place hums
with purpose. An educated, diversely aged and surprisingly international
collection of residents rises early each morning for on-site duties: silt
casting, or foundry work, or a general tending of the odd, gray structures they
call home.
Later, the focus
turns to capoeira practice or evening strolls along
the canyon ridge. A cozy, dormitory-in-summer feel suffuses the place if you were to set the college on broil
then take away the college part. Shared living spaces.
Shared tasks. Even a shared music room.
Conceivably you
could let the word commune slip over a delicious resident-prepared
lunch of roasted yams and bell peppers. Bite your tongue.
This isn't
about divided labor, or shared space or living with your friends although that all happens here, a
visiting seminar student told me when I was there last spring. Everyone
who comes is here to make arcology work.
Yes, Mr. Soleri doesn't just imagine cities he invents words, too. Arcology, the portmanteau of architecture and ecology,
guides Arcosanti as well as other, generally
unrealized, Soleri creations. The pinnacle of arcology, the Hyper-Building, exists only on paper: a
kilometer-high tower that would house 100,000 residents plus all their
commercial and cultural requirements.
There are not
100,000 people at Arcosanti. The plan was, and is, to
draw 5,000; the population is under 100.
To visit Arcosanti now is to catch it at an odd moment. The
principles put into practice there long ago environmental sensitivity, anticonsumerism have started making their way into
general consciousness. As its founder predicted decades ago, the outside world
is finally discovering its current course to be unsustainable. Interestingly,
for vastly different reasons, Arcosanti finds itself
discovering the same.
At a community
meeting while I was there, Mr. Soleri, who lives near
Of course,
we're sitting on a billion-dollar view, one woman said, glancing toward
the canyon, with its dramatic basalt cliffs and picturesque scatterings of
scrub brush. But the idea of selling off a chunk of the dream only drew laughs.
Somebody mumbled something about Disney Arcosanti
and soon conversation moved on.
This is not
Disney, or the Plaza, or even Motel 6. Mr. Soleri has
defined his creation as the city in the image of man, and it forces a
certain question where visitors are concerned: Which man, exactly? Certainly
not the type who needs to lock his doors, or have his bathroom trash can lined with something finer than a grocery bag. Wheelchair
access is limited, and guests are encouraged to bring flashlights.
But the
redefining of comfort becomes contagious. And short of, say, financing it for
the next century, the best way to appreciate the Arcosanti
experiment is to walk it: Here, the site of a future energy apron
around the perimeter, wherein greenhouses trap heat and disperse it throughout
the apartments in winter months; there, enormous concrete armatures reaching
out to one day support a canopy for the music center. A moat runs around the
stage, cooling it.
For some of the
estimated 40,000 to 50,000 annual visitors who want to stay overnight, two
options exist.
One is a row of
small, austere guest rooms ($30 to $50 a night) lining the outer edge of the
site. Far more inviting and central is the Sky Suite. At $100 a night, it
offers a double and a single bedroom, a snug living room and a kitchenette with
stunning views of the mesa. Just outside, a roof makes for a private patio with
a breathtaking panorama.
Mr. Soleri continues to call Arcosanti
his lean urban laboratory. And a well-disciplined optimism persists
here, despite the occasional writing on the wall or the occasional absence of a wall.
But aging visions
of the future have a singular appeal, and at Arcosanti,
it's possible to enjoy the hopefulness without betraying it. It is not cynicism
to find a special beauty in what hasn't yet come to pass.
Precisely what I
was going to tell the McDonald's cashier on my way back to
VISITOR
INFORMATION
Arcosanti (928-632-6217, www.arcosanti.org)
is 65 miles north of Phoenix.
Take I-17 to Exit 262 (Cordes
Junction). Small signs will direct you to a three-mile stretch of dirt
road leading to the
General tours are
offered seven days a week, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.; suggested donation is $8.
Specialty tours architecture and planning,
agriculture or bird-watching can sometimes be arranged if requested in
advance.
For overnight
stays, reservations are recommended. One-week ($475) and four-week ($1,125)
seminars and workshops are also available; contact the coordinator at (928)
632-6233.