Arcosanti and Me

Preface

Paolo Soleri and the Arcosanti project.

              Arcosanti is an experimental architectural project through which Italian architect Dr. Paolo Soleri is attempting to build a town intentionally designed to be ecologically friendly. The project has been underway since 1970; when completed, it will house five thousand people. Arcosanti is located near the geographical center of the state of Arizona, at Cordes Junction. The concept upon which the plan and design of the town is based is called “Arcology” – that is, a portmanteau of ‘architecture’ and ‘ecology.’ Arcology is a conceptual idea, materialized by a three dimensional design for a city or a town: that is, a structure rising up, to be thought of as three dimensional rather than as spread out in a flat pattern, as most modern cities do. In other words, an arcology is envisioned as a town or city built entirely as one free-standing integral structure. However, Dr. Soleri’s plan for Arcosanti as an arcological project is not, strictly speaking, a single arcology structure; rather it is imagined as several small arcological structures across the mesa on which it is being constructed.

              The notion of Arcology originates in Soleri’s personal philosophy, which posits that urban design should follow the rules of evolution. Soleri believes that as organisms develop and evolve, they become more complex and more miniaturized; processes that engender a three-dimensional structure. Soleri makes an analogy between organisms and cities. The next step in the evolution of humankind, he believes, will be to develop three- dimensional urban infrastructures. Through his work, Dr. Soleri often states (and restates) that he wants to develop a more advanced human ecology.

              Human settlements have historically been the crucible for civilization: culture, science, art, technology have all been and continue to be bred in the urban environment. Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. In the coming decades, global megalopolises will dominate the world. As the megalopolises expand in a harmful two-dimensional way, they cover arable land and produce pollutants; they are inherently inaccessible to their inhabitants.

              Paolo Soleri graduated with highest honors from Italy’s Torino Polytechnico University in 1946, with a doctorate in architecture. He was an apprentice to the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, living and working at Wright’s Taliesin East and Taliesin West communities during the late 1940’s. Architecturally, however, Wright was only a minimal influence on Dr. Soleri; the famed French architect and city planner le Corbusier was a greater influence on his work.

.              The construction of Arcosanti is the paramount concern of the Cosanti Foundation, a 501-3C charitable organization established by Dr. Soleri and his late wife, Colly, in the early 1960’s. About 3% of the total plan for Arcosanti has been completed to date. Despite lack of funds, the Foundation perseveres in its mission to build Arcosanti with the participation of those attending “Arcosanti Workshops.” Dr. Soleri continues indefatigably to believe that there must be room in society for urban experiments such as Arcosanti.

Arcosanti Experienced

              I felt it might be helpful to tell my tale, a partial account of my almost 16 years of experience between 1975 and 2000 with Dr. Paolo Soleri and The Cosanti Foundation, at the Arcosanti site in central AZ and the Cosanti studios in Paradise Valley, a suburb of Scottsdale, near Phoenix, AZ. There is a strong oral tradition at Arcosanti, and certainly some of the information in this book has been derived from that. But in this account, I’ve tried to keep only to those things which I directly experienced myself, tried to eschew rumor and hearsay (of which there is also quite a bit at Arcosanti). This book is best understood as MY version of the “Truth.” I’ve expressed my observations and opinions in my own way; I’ve written from memory as I did not keep a daily journal when I was at Cosanti and Arcosanti. Real names have been retained for authenticity. (In some real-life stories, names are changed “to protect the innocent.” But I believe I have a special case here. It would make no sense to change the names, since the people I refer to have been so closely associated with the Arcosanti project – which is, after all, a real place, a public place; that there is, quite simply, no way to disguise who they are.) I contend that these people, because of their involvement with the Arcosanti project, are public figures.¹ Dr. Paolo Soleri himself is a public figure. Thus, they can be discussed in a public manner.

              Paolo Soleri would say – in fact has said, that the daily experience at Arcosanti is irrelevant to the goal of building the Arcosanti arcology, and is simply a consequence of the construction effort. But to me, the daily experience there is very relevant; in fact it is the essence of the project as it exists today.

              For more information about the Arcosanti project, it is worthwhile to peruse the Arcosanti website at <www.arcosanti.org>

 About Me. Part 1: My Introduction to Arcosanti

I’m always looking for something new and interesting. Frequently, this has led to being interested in the “latest thing” but in my more mature years, I have come to see how ephemeral this is and so I’ve started trying to stick with the tried and proven (which, it must be said, frequently was the “latest thing” forty years ago).

As a young person, I read voraciously. In addition to nonfiction science and technology (for example, science encyclopedias), much of what I read in my youth was science fiction or SciFi. Everything from ‘Tom Swift, Jr.’ to Robert A. Heinlein’s Space Cadet was what I went to, right after “Dick & Jane”). As I matured, I read newspapers and news magazines. From those mainstream publications, I learned there was a burgeoning study of the future, called futurology, or futuristics. My Sci-Fi background naturally led to an interest in futurology, so I subscribed to The Futurist magazine. In 1970, Alvin Toffler published Future Shock, which I read in paperback as a college freshman. The cover of Future Shock had an image in a few primary colors with the title, “Future Shock” printed in a black digital-style typeface

While attending the University of Cincinnati (UC), I took an interdisciplinary course in the school of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning (DAAP) called “Man & Environment.” I wrote a long term paper for the class, in which I attempted to tie together human evolution and the development of technology. I think it was on a bulletin board at UC that I learned that a futurology conference was to be held in August of 1973 at the College of Mount Saint Joseph, just outside Cincinnati. Tuition for the conference was reasonable, and I signed up immediately to go.

Futurology conferences

The College campus of Mount Saint Joseph is a collection of modern buildings set in the green Cincinnati suburb of Delhi. Upon arrival there for the conference, I discovered that a high school friend, Kathy Neuman, was a student at the College and was working at the futurology conference. At that time, the College of Mount Saint Joseph was a conservative Catholic school and I was pretty sure the nuns didn’t care for my long hair and brash attitude. Several of the conference participants were middle-aged women. In between sessions, they talked and read copies of the original large-format W (Women’s Wear Daily) magazine. Some of them commented that I was “wordy” when I stood up to ask questions during the conference sessions.

During this, my first futurology conference, I got to hear futurist John McHale, author of The Future of the Future,⁷ speak; and also the late futurist Robert Theobald, who lived in Wickenburg, Arizona, and presented a book titled, Teg’s 1994, in which he projected the widespread use of personal computers in the 1990’s. The movie Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston and predicting a dystopian future, was shown. Werner von Braun, the rocket scientist, was the final speaker.

The next futurology conference at the College of Mount Saint Joseph, in August of 1974, held destiny for me: Dr. Paolo Soleri was listed as one of the main speakers, and the conference brochure featured a photograph of Soleri standing in front of his “3-D Jersey” model, a complex-looking structure. For this Global Man And His Future conference, there were several other speakers listed, including social scientist Dr. Benjamin Hourani, who was scheduled to speak just before Paolo Soleri. I confess that what excited me most at Dr. Hourani’s session was anticipating Soleri’s presentation. Dr. Hourani, wearing a conservative suit and a tie, stood at a lectern and read aloud a paper he had written. This was boring; but when Paolo Soleri came out, he was dressed in a green polo shirt and grey slacks. He made short, quick movements as he adjusted the two slide projectors set up for him. Two screens hung above the stage in the auditorium, and Soleri presented an amazing slide lecture. His thick northern Italian accent was difficult to understand at first, but I was astounded by the images he was presenting. He showed slide after slide of the unusual structures at Cosanti and Arcosanti, as well as images of models for his urban designs, including a silt-cast plaster model for an urban dam, which completely captured my imagination. In addition to amazing architecture, Soleri described and explained the workshops being held at the Arcosanti site in Arizona. There were slides of the students working, slides of the students at Morning Meeting in the shade against the mesa cliff.

It could have been that it was my Sci-Fi background that prompted me to identify with Paolo Soleri’s architecture, insofar as it seemed “futuristic” in nature to me. I thought, ‘Here is a man doing science fiction, developing new ways of designing for the future.’ In my readings about Buckminster Fuller, I had gathered that one of Fuller’s main points was that instead of changing “man” to improve the world, we had to change humanity’s technology. So I saw Soleri’s proposition for a new urban planning paradigm, which he called Arcology (‘architecture + ecology’), as a kind of technological solution for the world’s problems.

Following Soleri’s presentation, walking out of the auditorium, a woman assured me that his lecture was “just for fun,” and that Dr. Hourani’s lecture was the more substantial of the two. I hardly heard her: I was dazzled by Soleri’s presentation. But it did not initially occur to me that it was possible to go to Arcosanti myself.

After a break, a college staff member appeared on the auditorium stage to announce that Paolo Soleri would take questions in a classroom down the hallway. I was very interested to hear anything Soleri had to say so I walked down to the classroom, already half-full of interested students sitting at student desk-chairs. I sat down in the right front row, much as I do in a normal school setting. Paolo sat facing us, behind the teacher’s table at the front of the classroom. Others in the room who were more familiar with Soleri’s work than I was asked some questions, some of which were cryptic to me. They referred to Paolo’s book, Arcology: the City in the Image of Man; this became a rapid-fire exchange between Soleri and the students. I was still new to Soleri’s arcology concept, and I was struggling to completely understand it. I had yet to read the Arcology book but I’d been excited and influenced by an illustration of an arcology that had appeared on the cover of Analog, a science fiction magazine. My imagination was running rampant and I raised my hand to ask whether an arcology would consist of layers, some with greenery and some with human habitation. Soleri smiled, held his hands horizontal to one another, and said, “A sandwich!” The whole room laughed! (Decades later, during a meeting in his studio at Arcosanti, Paolo would acknowledge that he remembered this encounter.) After that, the question-and-answer session quickly wound down.

Towards the end of this second futurology conference, the 1972 film titled, Future Shock was shown, inspired by Alvin Toffler’s book of the same name. The film projected all sorts of technological advances and cultural oddities for the coming decades. In fact, it was prophetic.

In order to get some college credits from the College of Mount Saint Joseph for having participated in this conference, I had to submit a short paper. In my paper, I attempted to summarize Soleri’s arcology concept and advocate for it as a solution to the world’s problems. I had yet to read Soleri’s books, and my description of the arcology concept was vague since it was based on what I had grasped from Paolo’s presentation. I received a telephone call from the teacher at the college who’d read my paper. She pointed out that I had lifted a sentence from the back cover of The Bridge Between Matter and Spirit is Matter Becoming Spirit, but said that didn’t matter; what did matter was that the arcology idea was ridiculous and that Soleri should not be taken seriously.

Serendipity

Sometime during the next couple of months, it dawned upon me that Paolo Soleri had a program at Arcosanti that I could actually participate in. In the fall of 1974, I started to ask around the University of Cincinnati campus to find out what I could about it. It didn’t occur to me to go to the library since I had no idea of the number of articles in print about Paolo Soleri and Arcosanti. Then someone in the DAAP School at UC gave me the name of Soleri’s organization, The Cosanti Foundation. Someone else told me the people at Arcosanti were very “arty,” and the late urban planning professor Harris Forusz warned me that those who managed Arcosanti were “very shrewd” and would take advantage of someone naïve like me.

I found an article about Paolo Soleri, The Cosanti Foundation and Arcosanti in The Last Whole Earth Catalogue.⁹ An address was listed; I immediately wrote a letter to ask for information about Arcosanti. I received back a sepia-toned poster for the 1974 Arcosanti Workshops, showing a panoramic view of the high desert site and an explanation of the program. The text emphasized the wilderness environment of the Arcosanti site, stating what some might think obvious: one would find no “city” there. A hand-written note accompanied the poster, explaining that I would receive the 1975 Arcosanti Workshop poster as soon as it was available. The information packet included a brochure about Ivan Pintar’s Paolo Soleri and Arcosanti Slides, without any mention of just who Ivan Pintar was. A list of books and materials available for sale was included, as well as a small Cosanti Originals/Soleri windbells catalog. I promptly ordered a paperback copy of Soleri’s book, Arcology: the City in the Image of Man. (I had previously ordered the 1975 Arcosanti Calendar and a copy of The Sketchbooks of Paolo Soleri.)

Serendipity and coincidence: I was gradually inspired to involve myself in Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti experiment. I was young and naïve and I thought it was all a straightforward proposition. Idealistically, I imagined the project as being populated with intelligent and magnanimous people; I thought the project was succeeding and would succeed.  I didn’t realize how precarious the whole venture is and I had only a few preconceptions, going in, as to what I would actually find at Arcosanti.

Beginnings

In early 1971, I was a high school student who read constantly. I read and read, and one day in the daily newspaper, the Cincinnati Post¹, I happened upon an article describing a new city that was to rise vertically in layers, being designed and built by a foreign-named architect. A photograph was featured, of a long-haired young man in a hard-hat! This was unusual garb for a hippie-type. He was facing away from the camera, towards concrete pillars rising vertically in front of him. This, of course, was the beginnings of the South Vault at Arcosanti. (Since then, although I have seen perhaps 90% of all the articles ever published about Arcosanti and Paolo Soleri, I have never again found that particular one article and photograph.) The newspaper article amazed me: I had forgotten an article I’d seen two years earlier in Life magazine, with photos of models for cities rising vertically in strange geometric shapes. The architect who’d designed the models and his assistants were hanging around in the background; an Arizona sunset lit the scene.

As a teenager interested in the social upheavals of the late 1960’s and early 1970s, I frequented stores and other places in Cincinnati that catered to the “counter-culture.” I was involved in the fashion and music of the time: I listened to the local FM rock station, which featured a program on Saturday nights called “The Jelly Pudding Show.” In those times, in the late 1960’s and early 1970s in downtown Cincinnati, Kidd’s Books on Vine Street drew local counter-cultural-types like a magnet. The street-level floor was filled with tables of children’s books and a rack of magazines, but the real bookstore was downstairs. You traversed steps with “Good Ole Grateful Dead” stickers on some of the risers to get to a basement room with art books off to the side, the main room full of Sci-Fi, fantasy, and especially books aimed at the counter-culture crowd. Evidently Kidd’s catered to the local Cincinnati “hip” community; it would carry books at special request, holding them on display for specific individuals. The original series of The Whole Earth Catalogue was prominent. So were books on the Grateful Dead. Kidd’s carried all kinds of books and publications I had never heard of, including the underground portable video movement’s publication, Radical Software. There was a book that documented exactly what a million is by displaying a million dots. Pages and pages of dots. Just dots. “You’re too young to be in here,” the female clerk behind the counter said, one time when I was there in 1970. I asked why and she pointed out some soft pornography in the back corner. But I wasn’t interested in that, I protested. They sold stuff to me anyway, even though I was in the eleventh grade at Western Hills High School in 1970.

One Saturday when I went into Kidd’s, they had on a display table a large horizontally-formatted book titled, Arcology: the City in the Image of Man³, by architect Paolo Soleri. I didn’t realize that Soleri is an Italian name. I briefly flipped through the huge pages and saw drawings of futuristic cities built as whole structures. Fascinating. Looking around the store, I later found another book by the same author, The Bridge Between Matter and Spirit is Matter Becoming Spirit,^, a collection of essays written by Soleri primarily during the 1960’s. I took the small paperback home and put it in my to-read-later drawer. Kidd’s also carried a book about Soleri’s work, Visionary Cities: The Arcology of Paolo Soleri, ⁵ by Donald Wall. It was a trade paperback with a square format and designed with 1970s black and white supergraphics. It turned out that this was a condensed version of a larger hardcover published at the time, of Paolo Soleri’s 1970 retrospective exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. From Kidd’s I also regularly purchased some of the science fiction I was reading, including books by Robert A. Heinlein (Farnham’s Freehold) and Larry Niven (Ringworld). At one point, they also had Leonard Nimoy’s I Am Not Spock.

Reading mainstream news magazines about the counter-culture (as well as The Last Whole Earth Catalogue), I became aware of architect-engineer Buckminster Fuller’s importance. He had invented the geodesic dome, among other things, and advocated for technology’s allowing the equitable distribution of resources for the world’s population. Fuller was a counterculture hero; his geodesic domes were built as living structures in various communes including Drop City in Colorado and Earth People’s Park in Vermont. Kidd’s Books carried some of Fuller’s publications, and after I read a newspaper article about Fuller, I purchased Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth⁷ from Kidd’s. This was a difficult read, but very interesting. Around 1972, my friend Jamie Alexander and I drove up to Kent State University in northern Ohio to hear Buckminster Fuller speak. At Kent State, Fuller spoke before a SRO crowd in a large auditorium. We listened to him as he expounded upon his ideas for hours, but finally had to return to Cincinnati. I mailed away for an information packet about Buckminster Fuller but my Mother wouldn’t let me go to his workshop in Carbondale, Illinois.

Coming of Age

I grew up in in western Cincinnati, Ohio, in a small suburban-style house on a cul-de-sac in a working-class neighborhood. As an only child, not only was I a loner, I learned at an early age to be a loner. I was born with birth defects, among them a right club foot that necessitated a series of painful childhood corrective orthopedic surgeries; I wore plaster leg casts and had to use crutches. I was technically handicapped, which afflicted me with psychological problems throughout my life. I felt abused by the kids in my neighborhood, by students, teachers and principals in junior and senior high schools; I tried to retain my focus on the horizons of my intelligence and interests. An ability to influence a clutch of friends in high school who saw me as a “hip” voice gained me some close relationships, including some young women. But the breakup of my community of friends after we all graduated from high school and went our separate ways led me back to being a loner. I yearned for another place, beyond the ken of my small Cincinnati community. I yearned for a community of kindred souls who were also interested in the future and the fate of humanity, perhaps pursuing a futuristic project of some kind. I had a vision of a group of people in the mountains, somewhere Out West, doing this. That, I believe, is why I was drawn to Arcosanti.

When I first came to Arcosanti, I was 23 years old and inexperienced. I had led a sheltered childhood in a provincial community. I believed Arcosanti was a project that could save the world. I didn’t realize what a pastiche of personalities Arcosanti was.

Over time, as I gathered other experiences in addition to the Arcosanti experience (UC, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, ASU) and as mental illness crept in, as I matured and changed, it was not always in keeping with the tides of Arcosanti. I didn’t realize how personal the atmosphere at Arcosanti could be, or how close I’d become to its leaders.

Growing up reading science fiction, I was exposed to many different alternative social, scientific and technological ideas and notions. This exposure caused me to question the world around me. I saw different ways of using and developing technology and social systems than those that were widely accepted by the general public, worldwide. When I encountered the ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Paolo Soleri, I thought that they were working out alternative ideas for using technology than those that were presently being used in what passes for civilization. I thought that Fuller and Soleri were “doing” science fiction. This alternative view of the world also caused me to be attracted to what was then the counter-culture, although as I learned more about the counter-culture’s ideas I found I did not always agree.

Preparing for Arizona

In late summer, 1974, I went into the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati for hernia surgery. I had a long recovery there, as the surgery was initially botched. While I recovering in the hospital from the surgery, I read Donald Wall’s paperback version of Visionary Cities, a book about Dr. Soleri’s Arcology concept. It was intriguing and inspiring. Because I was still recovering from the surgery, I could not attend the University of Cincinnati for Fall Quarter, 1974. After some rest at home, I went out and got a part-time evening janitorial job. I had decided that, since I had all this time on my hands, I would use it to save my money and prepare to travel to Arizona for a spring, 1975 Arcosanti Workshop. I applied for an Arcosanti Workshop and received an acceptance packet from Cosanti Foundation. Little did I know the hard work that lay before me. Around this time, my Father saw an advertisement in the classified employment section of the Sunday Cincinnati Enquirer for summer jobs at the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. I was excited at the prospect of spending spring and summer of 1975 in Arizona!

I went to Stouffer’s Hotel on the western edge of downtown Cincinnati to interview for the summer job with Grand Canyon National Park Lodges. I told the interviewer that I was willing to work hard and even cut my long hair but I just had to get out of Cincinnati. My life at that time wasn’t very good. I was a pothead with no friends to speak of and my relations with my parents at home was strained. They certainly would have been happy to see me leave the house I had grown up in. I suffered from acute depression, as well; so much so that I would say later, “I couldn’t see straight.” One of my professors in the Sociology department at the University of Cincinnati had sent a letter to my parents, suggesting that I be pulled out of school and put into a hospital, but I received by mail the good news that I had been hired by Grand Canyon National Park Lodges. So I went ahead and applied for the second Arcosanti Workshop of 1975, including in my application an introductory essay, which I had written in green ballpoint pen while I sat at my desk.

During the daytime, my parents were not at home; I could crank up my stereo and listen to a lot of music. Vinyl records, including Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd. ELP’s songs about suicide, war and starving Third World children depressed me no end. I was a Pink Floyd fan long before their 1973 breakout hit album, The Dark Side of the Moon but its admonishments to “do something with your life” inspired me to get out of my parent’s house and Cincinnati. Jefferson Starship’s 1974 album, Dragonfly, includes a song, ‘Ride the Tiger,’ with a partial lyric, “Look to the summer of ’75…” I sat on the floor of my room and flipped through the pages of the trade paperback edition of Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, sometimes smoking a joint, listening to loud rock music, including The Who’s Quadrophenia. I studied the book in depth. Later, as I worked on my Masters Thesis at Arizona Sate University in the mid-1980’s and then under Soleri at Arcosanti, I understood it better. But in 1974, reading The Bridge Between Matter and Spirit is Matter Becoming Spirit in the parked car before going to my evening janitorial job at a printing company, I used a green felt-tip pen to underline significant passages.

I arranged things so the dates on which my spring 1975 Arcosanti Workshop ended and my summer employment with Grand Canyon National Park Lodges were a couple of weeks apart. Having never been to Arizona and not having done my homework; therefore not comprehending the distances involved, I thought I would travel around Arizona (this without a car), camp out, see the sights, and so on. I had looked at a Rand McNally road atlas and had fixated on the campground at Picacho Peak between Phoenix and Tucson as a destination. My Mother wouldn’t have this, so I telephoned the Grand Canyon National Park Lodges to ask whether I could arrive a couple of weeks early. OK, they said.

I bought a TWA airline ticket since I thought TWA was the epitome of travel (next to the SST). The Cosanti Foundation’s acceptance packet included a list of things to bring along with you; this included any tool you might want to have available for your personal use during the construction workshop (I didn’t), specifically a tape measure, which I bought at a local hardware store (I still have it today). I began packing—my Father lent me a military surplus bag with handles. I knew I was going to be gone for six months or so, so I packed two bags. I eagerly anticipated my adventure in Arizona—my first time away from home!

The day to travel finally came. My folks took me to the Greater Cincinnati Airport across the Ohio River in Northern Kentucky. Of course this was my first time flying. The flight I had booked went first to St. Louis, where I would catch a connecting flight to Phoenix. I had, in. Cosanti’s information packet, instructions for getting from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to Cosanti, in the suburb of Paradise Valley.

Boarding the airplane, sitting in my seat, I noticed that the plane was only partially filled. I saw businessmen in suits, while I wore blue jeans, an army surplus jacket and had long red hair. Take-off and the fight itself were more than I had imagined. When we arrived at the quiet St. Louis-Lambert Airport, I had to wait for my connecting flight. I sat on long, flat black, padded benches, gazed out of expansive windows at the green Missouri countryside. The airplane for the flight to Phoenix was filled to capacity. I had a window seat and stared out at the passing rural American landscape. I used my camera to take pictures out of the window. Paolo Soleri’s comments in The Bridge Between Matter and Spirit is Matter becoming Spirit concerning a “museum of the air” and “the sculpture earth” came into my mind:

“Given the landscape of Europe let’s say 20,000 years ago, blanketed by forests, and the Europe of today almost uninterruptedly farmed, would we find more etherialization among the saber-tooth tiger, mammoth, bison, bears, and trees than today? If we say yes, we must carefully disconnect ourselves from everything which is ‘civilized’ nature: that is to say, all that which is human and return to the innocence of the animal. Step forward, please, if any of us is so inclined. I for one, will stone you, betraying the spirit, you a true ‘entropic pollutant.’”

The airplane finally landed at Terminal 2 of Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, surrounded by desert landscape. The current large Terminals 3 and 4 had yet to be built. After we disembarked from the plane, I made my way through the new-looking building and went outside. I was struck at how bright the sun was. I had the old Kodak Brownie camera my Mother had lent me ready and photographed a palm tree; I had not seen a real one before. It was sunny and warm, and I removed my jacket.

The First Days

The instructions in my packet from Cosanti were to catch a Gray Line Limousine from Sky Harbor Airport out to the Radisson Resort in north Scottsdale, then to take a taxi to 6433 Doubletree Road. I found the “limousine” parked several yards from the terminal. This was not the standard limousine you usually think of as a “limo;” it was more like a large station wagon with a few rows of seats. The driver agreed to my destination, took my money and strapped my bags to the top of the car. There were a few other passengers going along as well.

Travelling through Phoenix and Scottsdale, I was goggle-eyed at the desert, the mountains and the city. The limousine stopped at a few hotels and resorts in Scottsdale to let off passengers. I was the last to be let off since I was going the furthest north. We arrived at the Radisson Resort, and when the driver went to off-load my bags I discovered one was missing. So we had to back-track to one of the other resorts to retrieve my other bag. Luckily it was till there on the pavement. The driver was angry about this; he said I should have noticed my bag being off-loaded but I was too distracted by the sights and sounds of Scottsdale. The limousine drove me back to the Radisson resort ; this time I got out with both my bags. The “limo” drove away.

I pushed open the large, heavy doors of the building, entered the cool, dark lobby, found a bank of pay phones on the right. On one I called the taxi company Cosanti had listed, then went outside to wait for the cab. I didn’t dawdle in the lobby—I felt I didn’t belong there. When the taxi arrived, the driver had never heard of Cosanti, but when I showed him the hand-drawn map I’d adapted from the one in Cosanti’s letter, he immediately understood where to go. We drove a short distance up Scottsdale Road, then turned west onto Doubletree Road, looking for signs of Cosanti. We drove back and forth a couple of times, and then, near the intersection of Invergorden and Doubletree Roads, I spotted the North Studio’s skylight frame, jutting up from a small rise in the desert. “That’s it!” I exclaimed.

The taxi drove into Cosanti’s then-unpaved parking lot and the driver turned the car around. We looked own into the sunken courtyard in front of the North Studio. “What is this place?” the driver asked, and I replied, “Experimental architecture.” I exited the taxi with my bags and it drove away. I left my luggage at the top of the ramping brick walkway leading down into the North Apse. The bronze bell and light chandelier hanging from the roof of the North Apse was striking. The photographs I’d seen of Cosanti did not do it justice. I hadn’t realized how closely integrated it is, and smaller and more rustic than I had imagined.

I walked under the Ceramics Studio skylight, out past the foundry Apse on the left, where long-haired workers were noisily casting bronze Soleri windbells. Bells hung everywhere at Cosanti, from ceilings and beams. They were mostly ceramic, clacking in the breeze. As I passed the Pumpkin Apse, I remembered how I had seen it in a dream, back in Cincinnati.

I climbed the brick pathway, past the Barrel Vault on the left, the South Apse Courtyard and the Cat Cast House on the right. Walking past the sunken Earth House on the left, I arrived at the Student Apse area, where Arcosanti women awaited the arriving workshop group. I couldn’t help myself—I walked up, spread my arms, grinned widely and said, “Here I am!” They looked at me as if to say, Who is this guy? One of the women asked my name and I told them. Another said, “You’re Scott Davis?” To which I said Yes, and to which she said, “I’ll go tell Colly you’re here,” walking away. I don’t know how, but evidently my reputation had preceded me.

I went back to the entrance to retrieve my bags—luckily they were still there. I carried them to the Cat Cast House back yard, then proceeded to walk around Cosanti, exploring. I walked to the open entrance of the North Studio where the original Plexiglas Arcosanti model occupied most of the available space. The floor was dirt. You could barely walk sideways around the model. It was dusty and full of cobwebs but impressive nonetheless. There were posters of Paolo Soleri’s drawings at the top of the walls.

The northeast quadrant of the Cosanti compound comprised the new earth-cast concrete Antioch building, with earth still spilling from its interior. This structure had been built the previous year, by a workshop group from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Elsewhere, scattered around the compound, were green garden hoses running to various plantings. One hose ran into the new Antioch building’s bathroom, powering a toilet. In certain entranceways were hand-made plastic signs marking private areas, such as “Stop! Keep Out!” (This disturbed me at first, but years later, when I lived at Cosanti, I learned the necessity for those signs.) Outside the north Apse, near the Metal Studio, was the original bell tree. Soleri windbells hung from the display with yellow and red sale tags dangling from them. With my fifty percent workshopper discount, I bought a small Soleri windbell for $10.

Socializing with the Arcosanti and Cosanti people, someone told me that Colly Soleri would like to meet me. In the narrow, partially enclosed Ceramics Studio passageway outside the circular windows of the Office, Colly Soleri approached me and introduced herself. Someone had pointed me out to her. She was a beautiful lady with an oval face and short graying hair with bangs. She had a pretty smile and sparkling eyes. I introduced myself, and she complimented me on the introductory essay I had sent. She laughed that it was hand-written in green ballpoint, since most application essays were typed. She said Paolo wasn’t sure about it but she thought it was brilliant. She told me that Paolo was traveling and would meet our group up at the Arcosanti site.

I proceeded to the back yard of the Cat Cast House, where our workshop group was gathering. At the back door to the Cat Cast House, I met Naomi Kaufman, who was our Workshop Coordinator. Naomi was of medium height and build, with short, curly brown hair, beautiful and friendly. She told me about Paolo’s new arcology design series, the “Two Suns Arcology” and an upcoming exhibit of these arcology models at Xerox corporate headquarters in Rochester, New York. She also mentioned that Soleri had gone to Iran to meet with the Shah about constructing a desert arcology there. Years later, Paolo clarified: he never actually met with the Shah but he did meet with one of his staff.

About thirty workshoppers were expected that weekend—at the time, this was considered to be a medium-sized group. People trickled in. In the Cat Cast back yard, a couple of hand-made picnic-type tables had been set up from which to serve meals. As evening fell, we were expected to spread our sleeping bags on the remaining lawn or on the Swimming Pool deck. For dinner the first evening, we were served “McCleve’s Chili.” Michael McCleve was a denizen of Cosanti, locally known for his all-day chili recipes. After everyone had eaten, the staff asked for a volunteer to wash dishes in the Cat Cast House Kitchen. I was intrigued by the Cat Cast, which seemed to me to be very architecturally advanced and even “hip.” I volunteered to wash dishes so I could go into the Cat Cast House and see it from the inside. People played country music while I washed dishes; I hadn’t expected country music to be popular at Arcosanti.

The Cat Cast House is predominantly earth-cast concrete structure supported by railroad ties. The earth mold upon which the concrete roof had been cast had been shaped by a caterpillar tractor, thus it was literally “cat-cast.” As I understand it, the design for this house was influenced by the French architect and city planner le Corbusier. The railroad ties are in-filled with intricate wood window framework. Wood window panels open while glass ones are fixed. The building is L-shaped in plan. Inside, at the sink, I was told not to go back to the bunk rooms behind sculptural silt-cast concrete panels; nor down into the “Pit,” where there is a living room with a bunk room under the north entrance.

I finished washing dishes and was praised for doing a good job, quickly. As evening fell, I socialized with a few people and was invited to the parking lot to smoke pot. I’d thought I’d come to Arizona to get away from this, but was assured marijuana was more prevalent in Arizona than in Ohio. I’d hoped to mitigate my drug problem in Arizona but it would, eventually, get worse there. The first night at Cosanti, I slept in my sleeping bag out on the lawn of the Cat Cast’s back yard, along with several others. The second night, I slept on the floor of the Pumpkin Apse (also known as Jacob’s Studio, after Jacob Portnoy, an apprentice who had died of a brain tumor). In the morning, some of the group complained about my snoring. Nothing I could do about that. At one point, out of curiosity, I ducked into the entrance of the Barrel Vault drafting room to see a large elaborate drawing of the projected Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Cloister that was to be built on the south slope of the Arcosanti mesa.

Our workshop group was to stay and work at Cosanti for two or three days. The first morning, breakfast was served in the Cat Cast back yard; it consisted of granola with milk and orange juice to drink. After breakfast, the Workshop group was led to the south end of the Barrel vault building to register and pay tuition, if it had not already been paid. The beautiful blond Kimberly Cameron was the Cosanti Foundation’s Registrar that year. As soon as we paid our money, we were put to work.

At first, I was on a crew shoveling earth out from under the Antioch building’s roof. Then they told me that they wanted me at another work area of the compound. I was reassigned to scrubbing sand from bell castings, using steel brushes over on one side of the Foundry Apse. I foolishly asked how the sand got on the castings in the first place—the ins and outs of casting I would learn the hard way, in the early 1980’s, working in the Cosanti Foundry. We had a lunch break in the Cat Cast House back yard. For lunch, we were served cream cheese and walnut sandwiches on organic whole wheat bread; this was very good. There was iced tea, cold water and KoolAid to drink.

The educational portion of the Workshop, which was more interesting and pleasant than the manual labor, took up most of the second day. Paolo Soleri usually met with people in the Workshop group soon after their arrival. He would go around the group, ask people their names and their reasons for coming to Arcosanti. Then he would answer questions. Paolo rarely “lectures” to an Arcosanti group—usually he depends upon the question-and-answer method of discussion.

Since Paolo was on a lecture junket and not immediately available to us, Colly Soleri and Roger Tomalty met with the group separately. Colly met with us first, at the concrete stage at the rear of the Cat Cast House. She asked our names and how we had learned of Soleri and Arcosanti. I mentioned the futurology conference at College of Mount Saint Joseph. Colly said she was glad they had drawn one participant from that engagement. Several people in the group had seen the 1973 article in Architecture Plus, with color photographs of the Cosanti oasis.

Next, Roger Tomalty met with the Workshop group on the swimming pool deck under the twenty-nine ton concrete canopy that stood on twelve telephone poles. Roger was a construction foreman at Arcosanti, had been with the Cosanti Foundation since shortly before ground was broken at the site of the Arcosanti project, and was well-established in the hierarchy. He had blueprints of construction drawings and a conceptual drawing of the projected Arcosanti arcology. Roger is smart and talks fast. He described the construction drawings, going over what we would be working on. He made a point of saying that they were constructing only small outlying structures of the Arcosanti plan, and explained that the first structures built at Arcosanti were the South Vault and Ceramics Apse. He said one of the reasons for building the South vault first was “psychological.” A critic had said Paolo could build the small earth-cast structures at Cosanti using amateur student labor but that he couldn’t build something larger, like the South Vault at Arcosanti, that way. Roger answered some questions concerning the size and complexity of the buildings under construction at Arcosanti.

On the afternoon of the second day, I just had to have a shower. I asked an apparent staffer, Mary Hoadley, where I could take a shower. She directed me to the shower in the Earth House. I took my towel and toiletries to the north door of the Earth House and found the earth-cast concrete shower stall in the center of the small house, with Soleri-designed fish decorating the interior of the shower stall. Upon leaving the shower, I ran into Ivan Pintar, one of the occupants of the Earth House. He looked at me as if to say, “What the hell are you doing in here?!” I excused myself and exited the house past him. Later, Mary came to me to say that I shouldn’t have used that shower: Ivan was unhappy. She told me I should have used the new shower in the Antioch building but she herself had directed me to the Earth House. Afterwards, I felt badly about intruding on a private space and wondered if Mary had misdirected me deliberately. I later learned there was a dispute going on between Mary and Ivan and I had gotten caught in the middle.

The actual Arcosanti Workshop was about to begin. The next morning, we were to travel up to the Arcosanti site. Naomi, the Workshop Coordinator, had driven up to the site the previous day on business and had just returned that morning. She paraded around the Cat Cast back yard in a red down jacket, finally telling us, “It’s a little cooler up at the site.” It had been warm those first days in the Valley of the Sun. Luckily I had thought to bring a warm jacket and clothes—I had surmised from Cosanti’s information packet that it would be cold up in the mountains this time of year. Just how cold, I was about to find out. The leaders told us that those with cars should round up riders without. I was the last to find a ride and wound up in the back of a station wagon with a few other guys.

We left Cosanti and drove up Scottsdale Road; unlike today, it was hardly built up, still mostly suburban desert. Our car turned onto Bell Road (according to Colly’s directions) and we drove through the desert past a few suburban developments to the I-17 on-ramp, then proceeded north on the highway. I was amazed at the desert and the mountains. The desert is so expansive and the mountains so large! Stands of Saguaro cacti climbed the hills—there was nothing like this back in Ohio! After an hour or so in the car, we arrived at Cordes Junction.

This area was mountainous, mesa-dominated country, the skyline ringed with mountains and mesas that shadowed the land below. The developed area around Cordes Junction, at the junction of I-17 and Arizona State Highway 69, consisted of The Hub, an old highway diner right next to the highway, the Copper Star, an old cowboy bar with diner attached and the old full-service Chevron Station. There was a cattle guard at the entrance to Cordes Junction from the highway, to keep cows from wandering onto the road. (Years later, the old Chevron station was torn down and replaced with a new self-service one; the cattle guard removed as well.)

We drove through the Junction and turned north onto Arcosanti’s three mile dirt access road. As we approached, we could see the site from the road. The photos in the 1975 Arcosanti Calendar came alive—the buildings really were crouched like a futuristic village on the mesa top. We proceeded onto the site, driving behind it and down the High Road to the Camp in the Valley below. Camp is built on the south bank of the Agua Fria River, which is lined with Cottonwood trees. Camp occupies several acres; it consists of a few types of structures, including the Cubes. The Cubes are eight feet on each side, with large circular windows and skylights. They are all filled-in with various configurations of painted wood, including windows that project beyond the surface, with shelves on the interior. Most Camp residents live in these concrete huts. Adjacent to the Cubes was a white geodesic dome (where the Yurt stands today) with Plywood City standing to the east. Near Plywood City was the Octagon; standing among the Cubes is a long Cube that is the bathroom Cube. In the middle of the Camp was a garden, with a small plastic greenhouse near the center.

Many of our fellow Workshoppers had beaten us to Camp, so the Cubes were all taken. The only living space available for occupation was Plywood City, a long rectangular structure made of 2x4’s and – of course, plywood. Plywood City sat on the bank of the Agua Fria River; it’s a fifteen foot drop to the riverbed below. There were sex-segregated men’s and women’s bathrooms and showers on the west end of the building. The exterior of Plywood City was white-painted plywood. It had a decent roof. Plywood City was one of the few structures on site made of wood. Most of the other buildings were made of pre-cast and/or silt-cast concrete. At the east end of Plywood City was the Camp Kitchen, the only functioning kitchen on site at that time; everyone was fed from there. In between the east and west ends were six bunk rooms, three on the north side, three on the south side. The bunk rooms housed four people each, with plywood bunk-beds built into the walls. We had been given canvas-covered thick foam mats to lay our sleeping bags on; mine was navy blue. I chose the south west upper bunk, loaded my sleeping bag and luggage in. There was only a brown canvas flap with steel eyelets to hook onto nails, to cover the open bunk room; the wind was blowing it around. I took a photo but I was depressed by the primitive conditions.

Soon a few other guys arrived, also intending to move into this Plywood City bunk room. They said we had to do something about the open entrance right away since it was going to be cold at night. They planned to use the canvas and some wood to build a wall and a door. They sent me up the Hill, to the construction site, to find some wood to use for this. I climbed the high Road to the job site on the mesa top and learned from someone I met there that construction materials from the job site were not to be used in Camp! This trek took at least half an hour, but when I finally returned to Camp, having walked over a mile without finding anything, the rest of the guys were well on their way to constructing the wall door on the bunk room. When the door was complete, one guy used a blue marker to draw the logo of the rock band, Blue Oyster Cult, on the door’s plastic window. Naomi walked by and complimented us on a job well done that was a needed improvement.

Temperatures did indeed drop after sunset, especially in this valley surrounded by mesas. At night when it got cold, my room mate fired up an old Coleman gas camp stove and boiled water so steam vaporized into the room’s air. This did warm the room up some. The plywood walls in our bunk room were so thin you could hear most activities in the bathrooms next to it. The graffiti on the interior walls of Plywood City included a well-drawn caricature of Paolo with a caption, “Would you buy a used arcology from this man?” On the ceiling of one of the rooms, “Skunks smell” was scrawled in construction chalk. The Camp Kitchen on the east end of the building had a screened-in area around the serving window to keep flies out but at mealtimes, mostly at dinner, people lined up between the serving window and the Octagon, holding the door to the screened-in area open, letting flies in.

The bathroom building had in its interior three shower heads at the north wall with no stalls, and it was co-ed! This was in 1975; the situation has changed considerably since. But at the time I was embarrassed to shower with naked young women whom I didn’t know. Once, one of the women approached me in the shower and wanted to chat! Naked and wet! I found this very, very awkward.

My introduction to the Arcosanti project led me to go there to participate in a Workshop; I never anticipated that my involvement would stretch into decades. A certain structure to the daily activities and work at Arcosanti and the fact that one hundred or so people lived and worked on its site garnered a small and close-knit community. My next experiences, as the Workshop progressed, revolved around the Arcosanti community and construction site.