
Arcosanti - simonebrunozzi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti
======
twright
In 2015 I spent almost a week at Arcosanti volunteering for a small music
festival. It was a really weird place and not in a bad way. However, while the
descriptions paint it to be some grand experiment in architecture and urban
living. In practice it's a lot of concrete domes and vaults with some living
spaces tetris'ed together in the desert. They rent out the amphitheater and
forge bells. The people I met who lived at Arcosanti were interesting to talk
with but made it feel a little strange that all this was going on around what
was essentially the residents' porches and common areas.

One of the volunteer coordinators I got to know had lived at Arcosanti herself
and while she said the experience was nice (there's a stipend) she mentioned
there were, and still are, serious management problems with the non-profit
around it. I don't recall the specifics well enough to recount here but the
outcome meant the place kind of stagnated and continues to. The visionaries
who were there when it started are still there but lost their vision and are
resistant to changing how things are done. An urban laboratory it is no more
but has become a weird place to have lunch off I-17.

~~~
tgraham
I spent a lovely afternoon there in '16 doing just that and concur about the
odd vibe / fascinating but stagnated promise.

~~~
stoolpigeon
My dad took my brother and I in the early or maybe mid 80s. I remember feeling
like it was falling apart faster than they were building it and it was a cool
spot but didn't seem to be going anywhere. Seems it hasn't changed much. My
surprise is actually that it has kept going all this time.

------
ultrarunner
I ran a 100k starting at Arcosanti in winter 2019, which left under heavy
black clouds, light hail, and a blinding sunrise that illuminated the tall,
white dormant grass on the top of the mesa. It was like living in a sepia-
toned version of reality. All in all it was an absolutely surreal experience
that I'll remember forever.

------
motohagiography
In most provinces and municipalities in Canada, you can't even have a yurt on
your property without planning permission, and town councils are regarded
widely as the worst possible bureaucracies to deal with. This is what prevents
experimental living that could actually catch on and create something new and
sustainable. You can't even build off grid homes in many places because they
are not to code, which is subject to capture by various professions and
consultants.

There are so many possible alternatives to sprawl, but the culture of
bureaucracy is designed to prevent deviation from creating suburban blight. A
set of jurisdictions that supported (or didn't get in the way of) experimental
development would be really useful.

~~~
mrtksn
IMHO innovation happens in places with lots of contestants. If you look at
places with lax building codes or ineffective enforcement, what you get is
favelas and similar. On the other hand, many cities have an indigenous
architecture due to some kind of regulation or tax code. For example, in Paris
the architecture is the way it is because owners optimizes to meet the hight
criteria and avoid being taxed for the top floor.

I’m not into architecture but I suspect that architecture firms also
specializes on dealing with bureaucracy, which heightens the entry barrier for
the would-be builders/architects.

That said, I would agree that there could be a case of over regulation that
would lead to dullness.

~~~
f00zz
I'd argue that, at least in Sao Paulo, favelas are the result of overly strict
zoning and building codes.

------
haroldp
That was fun. And then I clicked through to "Arcology...a field of creating
architectural design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-
impact human habitats" and they list, "Begich Towers" in Whittier, Alaska,
where I grew up as an example. I guess that's cool if you want the dystopian
version, imposing itself on nature.

~~~
dvirsky
I remember reading about this place once, sounds like something out of some
dystopian novel. How was growing up there?

~~~
_delirium
He posted a bit more detail a few years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8841529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8841529)

~~~
dvirsky
Probably where I had read about it as well. Thanks.

------
tingletech
I worked on a website for them in the 1990s. The same people who hired us to
help on that also invited us to a "digital be in" where we meet Timothy Leary
(who had released a CD of Haight Asbury history at the event) and we got to
play with an Apple Newton. That was my first trip to San Francisco.

------
AceJohnny2
I think this is referenced in the sci-fi book Fall of Endymion by Dan Simmons,
where some characters spend time in a historical desert town built by a
community headed by an architect.

I always thought it was some sort of Frank Lloyd Wright reference, because I
didn't know anything else, but this fits the reference better.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
The "creator" of Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri [0], was an Italian-born architect,
who then moved to the US, and was a "student" of Frank Lloyd Wright in 1949.

I visited Arcosanti in 2013. Unfortunately it's an unfinished, incomplete
project - Soleri's goal was to reach a population of 5,000 people, a number he
thought it would make the community completely self-sustainable. I think it
reached ~100-150 at its peak.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Soleri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Soleri)

~~~
Pokepokalypse
it would have been self-sustainable. If there was any water there.

~~~
m0llusk
or commerce

~~~
ineedasername
There's a limit to how many ceramic and brass bells they can sell, and
compared to a local college/University it is not very accessible for their
paid workshops.

Getting to self sustainability always suffers from bootstrap problems, and
closed loop living systems of this sort, even at 5,000 people, would suffer
from lack of domain expertise or specialized resources to be truly self
sustainable. At least unless they either target a low technological level of
life or pick the exact 5,000 people needed to keep things going.

That's not meant to be a criticism of this project. If anything the project
has strong value in helping to understand roadblocks to small self-sustaining
communities, while also contributing to the zeitgeist of fascinating, quirky
niche communities that enhance our culture in valuable ways.

------
mullingitover
I stayed at Arcosanti on a cross-country trip and it was amazing. They're on
Airbnb[1]. It's pretty far out of the way but it's worth the trip.

[1]
[https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/33518175?source_impression_id=p...](https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/33518175?source_impression_id=p3_1596671363_Ui5rqFenXJ73PVhE)

------
jefurii
An architect friend of mine asserts that except for the everything-in-one-big-
building thing we already have arcologies, they're just called traditional
European (or Japanese) towns.

~~~
cultus
It's amazing how dense old cities are, despite having buildings usually less
than 5 stories. Far less resource-intensive and human-scale than 50-story
buildings. The density is essentially free, they just don't have room for
everyone to have their own car. That's a good thing though. Personal cars,
even electric ones, are unsustainable, and walking or cycling is healthy and
fun.

------
cycomanic
Another great visionary in architecture was Hundertwasser. His philosophy was
quite to Soleri. What is particularly notable about his work is that he wanted
it to be used and practical. The Hundertwasser Haus in Vienna is amazing and
used as a social housing project (it also houses the museum so you can get a
glims of what it looks like inside). If you ever go to New Zealand I highly
recommend to see the Hundertwasser toilets in Kawakawa.

------
sitkack
I got to have festivus dinner with the folks at Arcosanti in 2001/2002 after I
invited myself onto the solar powered electric golf cart as it was making its
way back from a booze run into town. The whole place was staffed by idealistic
misfits. There should be a 1000 Arcosantis.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
> There should be a 1000 Arcosantis.

So much agree with you.

~~~
205guy
Kirsten Dirksen Seems to be finding and documenting them on her YouTube
channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen/videos)

Many are just individuals in alternative living situations or creative
housing, but some are communities or -in-the-making:

Earthship community in Taos New Mexico:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVp5koAOu9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVp5koAOu9M)

Back-to-the-traditional-village in Portugal:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgfIxUw-
wEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgfIxUw-wEU)

------
jokster99
This place is a great visit. It feels quite cultish though and everyone there
seems to be working on making bells for tourists. Super weird and interesting.

------
dang
If curious see also

2017
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15586064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15586064)

2015
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072960)

------
nkoren
Guess I should offer: I lived at Arcosanti for 5 years, and knew Soleri well.
AMA!

~~~
lincolnq
I hadn't heard of this till now, but I'm fascinated by projects like this.

Others in this thread have said that there are leadership issues currently,
leading to some kind of stagnation or decline. You said in another comment
that Paolo was controlling in terms of the vision, and it needed multiple
visions to succeed.

1) Can you expand on that? i.e., what would it take for Arcosanti to have
succeeded? Just Paolo letting people run with it?

2) What, if anything, would it take to "revive" Arcosanti today? Money?
Visionaries? Kicking people out?

3) Why did you live there? Why did you leave? Any interesting stories?

~~~
nkoren
Good questions! I'm now living on a different continent, and haven't been able
to follow Arcosanti's politics too closely, but my understanding is that the
current leadership issues may in fact signal the end of the stagnation and
decline, or at least a change in it.

To give a very brief overview of the secret history of Arcosanti: during the
1960s and 1970s, Paolo's radical philosophy took hold with the counter-
cultural zeitgeist, leading to a huge influx of energy. At any given time,
there might be several hundred people camping in the desert, volunteering for
construction. A series of massive music festivals brought in a lot of new
blood. But this energy was difficult to manage, and in truth, Soleri himself
was not a counter-cultural character. In many respects he was a deeply
conservative raised-by-nuns old-world Italian. Giant rock festivals just
didn't suit his vibe, and the whole thing felt like it was spinning out of
control. In 1978, one of the festivals created a multi-million-dollar
liability when a field that had been used for overflow parking caught fire,
and hundreds of cars burned.

This is all long before my time, but my understanding is that in the late 70s
-- I think it was 1979 -- there was a kind of purge, afterwards remembered as
the "Thanksgiving day massacre", wherein an inner circle of managers seized
control and informed most of the volunteers that their services would no
longer be needed. That made things more manageable, but it was the first of
two major steps towards stagnation. The second was in 1983, when Paolo's wife
Colly died. From what everyone has told me, she was the real power behind the
throne; to the extent that there was any organizational competency at the top
of the hierarchy, it came from Colly, not Paolo. When she died, all
construction came to a halt, and the population declined to as low as 30
people. I believe 1990 was probably the low point.

Since then, Arcosanti has gone through successive waves of renewal and
stagnation, roughly counter-cyclical to the outside economy. The population
has oscillated between about 50 and 100 people. When I arrived in the summer
of '92, a boom was starting. A recession at that time was pushing people to
look for alternatives to capitalism and consumerism and such, and enough of
those ended up at Arcosanti to bring it back to life. These people were quite
intrinsically motivated; they weren't disciples of Soleri. But few people
stayed long; the horizons were just too limited. Arcosanti has never evolved
beyond being a company town; you're free to pursue your own initiatives in
your spare time, but if you want to do your own thing full-time, you have to
leave. So most people with a scrap of ambition, did. That's certainly why I
did.

> 1) Can you expand on that? i.e., what would it take for Arcosanti to have
> succeeded? Just Paolo letting people run with it?

Kind of, yes. Although a more viable philosophy at the core of it would have
helped. Paolo had some real insights into the nature of consciousness-
emergence at urban scales being driven by complex interactions, and how the
design of the physical environment could facilitate that. But he totally
failed to realise that the economic environment also needed to be complex; he
had no understanding of economics at all. Furthermore, he conceived of cities
the way that architects conceive of buildings: as a object to be constructed.
He needed to think in terms of _processes_ rather than objects. A city's form
is the emergent result of a system of rules, so if you want to change the
form, you must change the rules -- not simply stipulate an alternative form,
and ignore the rules entirely.

"Letting people run with it" might have sorted a lot of these issues out
organically, but it _could_ have been better conceived in the first place.

Ultimately, though, the problem was that Arcosanti was constrained to being a
company town, unable to develop the necessary socio-economic complexity to
become anything more. The resistance to being more than that came from two
places: Paolo and his handful of upper managers. Paolo's reason, I believe,
was that he had become comfortable being a sort of Jeremiah character: a
prophet whom no one would listen too. He enjoyed saying "I told you so" as the
world started to discover the appeal of things he'd been talking about decades
earlier. But it's easy to have this attitude when your ideas haven't _truly_
been tested. If Arcosanti had been allowed to develop to critical mass and
beyond, then this would be a risk to the sort of ideological purity he enjoyed
wallowing in, however lonely.

On the other hand, his core group of upper managers weren't at all
ideological, but simply had comfortable lives which they didn't particularly
want to see disrupted. Arcosanti growing to its full potential would have
knocked them out of a lifestyle which they'd enjoyed since the early 1980s. So
they were resistant to change.

As I understand it, however, there's been something of a coup, and those upper
managers have just recently -- as of a few months ago -- been kicked out. I'm
a bit sad about this, because personally I got along with them well, and
Arcosanti's unlikely persistence over the decades is, in large part, due to
them. On the flipside, however, Arcosanti's failure to develop into more than
it is, is also due to them. It'll be interesting to see what happens now.

> 2) What, if anything, would it take to "revive" Arcosanti today? Money?
> Visionaries? Kicking people out?

The latter has evidently just happened. The first is definitely required. Not
sure about the second; visionaries can be a three-edged blade.

If the current revolution there results in a community wherein people can
pursue run their own businesses, live their own lives, and pursue their own
agenda -- and if this is coupled to an economic model which facilitates the
development of additional infrastructure, that is coherent with the overall
masterplan -- then this is as much as I could hope for.

> 3) Why did you live there? Why did you leave? Any interesting stories?

I moved there when I was 16, because I was enamored with Arcology theory and
wanted to learn everything I could about it. I left because it was time to go
get an architecture degree and start my own career and life, which I knew
would be too confined there.

As for interesting stories: yes, loads, but that's for another time. :-)

------
m3talsmith
I love Arcosanti. That's where I go when I need to get away for a coding
breakthrough. I wish I could live there and help build it, but my family would
never agree to move there with me.

------
Razengan
I expect arcologies (the sci-fi concept, as seen in SimCity etc., not current
implementations) to be the ideal habitat for futuristic civilizations, but I
wonder how they would fare with infectious outbreaks.

~~~
ineedasername
Complex closed systems are susceptible to cascading failures, infectious
outbreaks would be one possibility to begin such a cascade. Or imagine a minor
HVAC issue: a small build up of moisture. If not caught right away, it leads
to mold, possibly "sick building" syndrome, stresses medical resources,
moisture damage to structures, etc. Structural damage harms other resources,
takes them off line, and more humans are needed to fix those problems, in and
on.

Sure, you have things like that with buildings now. But they're not closed
systems: You have problems like the above, you ramp up resources dedicated to
the problem, bring in outside help to remediate, etc.

I think the higher the desired quality of life, the larger a closed system
would need to be. Think a few hundred years ago: a small village could be self
sufficient. The average town in Western society cannot be. Even a farm town,
with it's reliance on heavy machinery and agricultural industrial complex,
isn't self sufficient.

------
mark_l_watson
I have enjoyed many evenings there. The music amphitheater was designed for
great sound and the vegan meals were tasty. I got to have a long talk once
with the architect Soleri.

A good idea many years too early.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Nice! Would you mind sharing more about your experience with Soleri? A small
regret I have is that I never met him. I would have loved to ask him a few
things (in Italian!)

~~~
mark_l_watson
He designed the music amphitheater for his wife, who had passed away before I
met Soleri. We talked about the slow uptake of people wanting to live in low-
resource communal living areas like Arcosanti - that was a disappointment to
him.

I like the idea of low-energy and environmental impact living at places like
Arcosanti but my wife said no way!

If you search for his work, he did some awesome stuff.

------
cpeterso
Arcosanti architect Paolo Soleri also started a gallery for bronze and ceramic
arts near Phoenix that is still open:

[https://cosanti.com/](https://cosanti.com/)

~~~
me2i81
That used to be his house. The construction technique was interesting: make a
pile of dirt, pour/spread concrete over it. When the concrete cures dig out
the dirt.

------
ZoomZoomZoom
Also relevant: "Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity"

[https://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/10/14/magnasanti-
the-l...](https://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/10/14/magnasanti-the-largest-
and-most-terrifying-simcity/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-
TqpU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU)

~~~
detaro
and a HN discussion 2 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24052413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24052413)

------
csense
Arcologies in real life are way less cooler than the Simcity 2000 version.

It would be pretty neat to see a single enormous building with self-contained
housing, commerce and industry for 20k-50k people. Not to mention the optional
space launch capability. The design population of this is what, only 5k
people? And it's a bunch of buildings? And it also hasn't been able to move
out of the development phase for 50 years? Laaame.

------
josh2600
I went to FORM:ARCOSANTI some years back. It’s a festival at the site curated
by Hundred Waters.

I will never forget the surreal experience of seeing skrillex do a back to
back set with fourtet (those genres still don’t add up). The amphitheater is
actually pretty great.

------
m0llusk
doomed, static vision of development detached from the realities of life and
commerce

------
hizxy
Arizona has an amazing architectural history that the broader Phoenix area
ignores.

~~~
benatkin
Indeed. Phoenix is one of few places in Arizona where the uniqueness of the
area is neglected. It's full of the damn non-native palm trees and overuse of
swimming pools, air conditioning, and misters. It's just another consumerism-
driven major city.

The people are great and a lot of people love it for what it actually is, and
not what developers try to turn it into. It's a difficult battle to preserve
its character though!

------
qwerty456127
Wow. I didn't knew such a place could really exist. I thought arcologies were
never actually implemented.

What are all the engineered (or different from what an ordinary city usually
is in some other conceptual way) cities anyway?

------
joewrong
pretty cool! we learned about this in a utopias class I took. one of the
interesting books in that class was "Two Hundred Years of American Communes"
by Yaacov Oved.

------
slowhand09
I've owned an Arcosanti bell for 25+ years.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Me for six years. Lovely little piece of art.

------
throwawaynothx
I prefer floating cities.

------
29athrowaway
I cannot immediately see how this approach has less environmental impact.

I have thought that underground structures could have less environmental
impact. Leave the surface for animals and plants, and live underground.

Heat increases as you approach the center of the earth, so you get free
heating. Seismically it may suck, though.

Or, live inside mounds, like the Cahokia.

