From the Archives : A vision for Utopia in the high Arizona desert
Paolo Soleri grew up in Turin, Italy, and later moved to the United States in 1947 to study under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona. While Soleri deeply respected Wright, he strongly disagreed with Wright’s vision of suburban expansion (such as Broadacre City), which relied heavily on low-density housing and cars.
Coming from a dense European background, Soleri viewed American car-centric suburban sprawl as wasteful, environmentally destructive, and isolating. In response, he developed the theory of arcology, arguing that cities must “build up, not out”. His vision merged architecture and ecology into hyper-dense, self-contained urban ecosystems that preserve the surrounding natural landscape, minimize energy use, and place human interaction within close walking distances.
Before Arcosanti, Soleri and his wife, Colly, established Cosanti in Paradise Valley, Arizona, as an architectural studio and testing ground. To fund their creative projects and research, they began casting distinct bronze and ceramic wind bells—a craft that continues to support the community today.
By 1970, Soleri’s vision outgrew Cosanti. The nonprofit Cosanti Foundation purchased a large tract of land in the desert mesas near Cordes Junction, and construction on Arcosanti officially began. Soleri designed it as a prototype for a compact desert city meant to house up to 5,000 residents, demonstrating how humanity could live efficiently with a drastically reduced ecological footprint.
I walk around and get inspired by this place on a summer day in August 2020.
