Is the arcology concept dead?

Post Reply New Topic

With the recent death of Paoli Soleri, I would like to ask if Mr. Soleri's philosophy, not just Arcosanti, but his theories on the impact of architecture on society, the use of natural resources, and the encourage of human potential, has run it's course.

For those not familar with the man, the NYT carried his obituary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/arts/ ... .html?_r=0

I once walked by him at Arcosanti, a few years ago. Despite being in his 80s at the time, he was full of energy. Not many people get to build their visions, and live with them for 40 years.

If you ever get the chance, try to look at a (hardcopy) of "Arcology - City in the image of man", it's more of a picture book, but you get some idea of the scope of his ideas. I don't agree with all of them, but the man was brilliant.

Anyway, I wonder if his ideas, in some form, will be carried forward with his passing.

If arcology is a theory derived from observation of a trend, and not just a personal philosophy of Soleri's, and if the theory was valid during Soleri's life, his death should not roundly impact the continuation of that trend.

If arcology is a personal philosophy developed by Soleri, but his ideas had merit in the architectual community, I'm sure someone will continue his legacy.

If Soleri was arcology's only adherant, well, perhaps it died with him.

I've never heard of Soleri or arcology before today, so I have no clue.

The relevance of the way we build and the way we live is manifest. It won't go away. It is a live issue to ponder.

ruveyn

Just so people know, Arcology is a combination of architecture and ecology. It's the principle of having mega structures which are self contained, with their own power plants, mini farms, apartments etc. within them.

It's a long standing trend in science fiction. As a lifetime reader of science fiction (which is almost 40 years of reading it) I got pretty familiar with the concept. Anyone who reads science fiction will be since the futures that writers imagined often had such structures. So on the one hand it's the simple observation of an architectural trend that preceded Soleri. On the other hand, this architectural trend was happening in fiction, not in reality, and he's the one who coined the term and also popularized trying to build these in reality.



That this could happen in reality and not just science fiction was Soleri's personal philosophy but the architectural community has embraced trying it on a less grand scale. So it will likely continue just not on the grand scale that Soleri and science fiction writers imagined. A real-world trend we are starting to see more is many buildings linked by above-ground or underground pathways (which is sort of a mega structure if you pretend that all the linked buildings are really one structure due to linkage) and also rooftop gardens that the architect has actually built into the building.

So it's a little of both; an observation of a trend and a personal philosophy. I think it will continue after his death because it's a model of sustainability. That's why science fiction writers thought it up in the first place. Usually the writers used it as a way to sustain a population after an apocalypse but you don't need an apocalypse for it to model sustainability.

Cool. I learned something today.

live 20 minutes from Arcosanti. Ive been wanting to meet Paoli, so that sucks. I was just discussing with my friends a few days ago about whether or not Arcosanti will become more flexible in its direction when he dies.

Some of the bases in Antarctica already resemble arcologies on a smaller scale.

Probably the closest to Soleri's vision, through I'd actually pick some others in practice.

One of the issues out there is that the social, cultural, and legal infrustructure just does'nt exist to carry out even the simplier concepts produced by the Arcology movement. While I believe that you could structure a deal in the US to finance an arcology, you'd be hard pressed to keep it managed over more than 20 years. Even the planned community laws in most states would be hard pressed to deal with that timeframe.

There was another attempt at the idea, about 10-15 years prior to the creation of Arcosanti, but seeing as who still owns the right to that project, that's for another post.