Word: soleri
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That began to change in the 1970s with that decade's oil shocks, which produced a short-lived vogue for alternate heating technologies. The simultaneous rise of environmentalism also inspired what you might call hobbit architecture, cottages crowned with listless greenery and the odd solar panel. Paolo Soleri's ecotopian settlement, Arcosanti, began to take shape in the Arizona desert. But it wasn't until the 1990s that green architecture gained a foothold in mainstream building. That was partly the result of a growing realization that "sustainable" buildings have lower long-term heating and cooling costs. States began offering...
...Paolo Soleri, President Cosanti Foundation Mayer, Arizona
Keeping both the dreams and the drudgery going is the extraordinary task, and achievement, of Soleri. Though Soleri seems simple and humble, Arcosanti's "workshoppers," as his volunteers call themselves, regard him as a genius, evidently because of his preoccupation with things spiritual. When he first came to the U.S. from Turin 33 years ago, he was regarded as a builder with panache and promise. But he has had few commissions in three decades. "I have not been properly used," he insists. One Arcosanti worker says that Soleri is the only architect around today better known for what...
...like Providence, Soleri works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. He operates within a paltry budget of $250,000 a year, most of which comes from his books and lectures, the sale of bells made on the site, and the $300 fees paid by those who come to toil on the project for a five-week workshop period. Those who stay longer get put on the payroll at $35 a week; and a few "Frank Lloyd Wright Scholars" attend free in exchange for manning the kitchens, a reminder of Soleri's own apprenticeship at Wright's Taliesin...
Arcosanti receives periodic pummelings from discontented workshoppers and journalists. Soleri and his group shrug them off. Their commitment to the future certainly seems sincere. They are people who want to be part of something big and good and natural. Each year they cele brate the solstices and the equinoxes with all the abandon of 18th century English villagers gamboling round the Maypole on May Day. It was during one of these festivals that a cast-aluminum figure of Icarus was hung from the top of a 34-ft. vault, where it remained for many months. The symbolism was perhaps unintended...