ARCOSANTI: An Urban Laboratory.
It was May 1996, when a younger me visited an utopian metropolis in the Arizona desert: the center of experimentation and urban design laboratory ARCOSANTI, a non-profit institution in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
At the time, I was researching for my dissertation Travels Throughout the American Continent in Search of Identity (University of Florence, 1999), looking at how people have always told stories in an effort to make sense of experience.
Road narratives are an American favorite for that process of composing order and meaning into experience, featuring ordinary people trying to learn something about themselves and their country, to seek new experiences, to find more and better space, and to meet new people and explore alternative values.
True to the above, I was deeply fascinated by the #ARCOLOGY concept promoted by ARCOSANTI, which is the fusion of #ARChitecture + #ecOLOGY, seeking the radical reorganization of the built environment.
ABOUT ARCOSANTI: begun in 1970, continues to be developed as an experiential learning center. Paolo Soleri’s concept of compact city design saves resources, rethinking urbanization according to the laws of nature to improve quality of life for all, ultimatively making us more human.
Italian-American architect Paolo Soleri and his wife Colly established the Cosanti Foundation in 1965 in Paradise Valley, Arizona, and began the construction of Arcosanti, in order to physically test Soleri’s urban planning concept.
The builders who came through the workshop program made the current Arcosanti possible. The term Cosanti comes from two Italian words “Cosa” and “Anti” and means literally, “before things.” Cosanti, a non-profit educational institution focuses on ideas about urban design.
Further readings: Architectual digigest
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