The Washington Post visits the famous architectural something-or-other.
Arcosanti was started in the 1970s by Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a spitfire who seeks an alternative to a car-dominant, hyper-consumerist society….
“Arcosanti is both a success and a failure….”
The property sits on 15 cactus-strewn acres.
So that’s how they do it! Eco-living is determined by how many cactus you have strewn about! Good enough for me. No need to read the rest of the article.
I did like the correction appended to the article.
A previous version of this article incorrectly said that Steven Spielberg was inspired by the architecture of Arcosanti. It was George Lucas’s team that drew inspiration from the desert designs for the “Star Wars” movies.
Nice.
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May 4th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I occasionally stop at Arcosanti when going to places north, and there is nothing about the place that’s appealing to me. It’s barren and has a lot of unpainted concrete buldings that look modern. It does have great Solari bells that they cast in their bronze foundry. The gift shop and lunch restaurant aren’t bad either.
Aiyana
May 4th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Back in the 60s and 70s a lot of architecture was deemed “environmental” as a way to hide the fact that it was just bad architecture. It was all about the excuses. Back in architecture school I had a classmate who would state every time anyone criticized her projects, like the spaces or forms she created, that they just didn’t understand. Environmentalism as a cover for bad design. Or as my grandmother always said, “You’ve been a very Bad Design, back to your room right this instant.”