Archinect - News

Taking another look at Paolo Soleri's toxic legacy

2020-08-18T15:19:00-04:00

In November 2017, four years after her father’s death, Soleri’s youngest daughter, Daniela, published an essay on medium.com, claiming that her father had sexually abused her and attempted to rape her as a teenager. She had told some of Soleri’s inner circle decades earlier, she wrote, and they had done nothing.

Steve Rose of The Guardian explores the legacy of architect Paolo Soleri, both sordid and visionary.

The in-depth article delves both into the history of Arcosanti and Soleri's heroic status while also highlighting the architect's toxic relationships with various women, including his daughter, Daniela, who he sexually abused. The article, published before the recent announcement that the Taliesin School of Architecture would relocate to Arcosanti from Taliesin, is worth revisiting amid the ongoing reckoning taking place with regards to abuses of power within architecture.

Daniela Soleri accuses father, Paolo Soleri, of sexual abuse

2017-12-20T14:17:00-05:00

But speaking out is just a beginning. Others undergoing experiences similar to mine need assurance that protecting themselves and demanding fairness will be supported, regardless of who the perpetrator is, or how his work is perceived. They need to know that strengthening society’s capacity for fair, thoughtful treatment of everyone is also a valuable contribution, and not a threat.

Danila Soleri, in a poignant and exposing open letter published on Medium, titled "Sexual abuse: it's you, him, and his work" has accused her father, Paolo Soleri, of sexual abuse.

The open letter walks us through the psychological, emotional and tangent emotions and repercussions of such an experience while detailing the inner and outward struggle of living with a father who on the one hand had become notorious for his architectural marvels but who on the other hand had forgone human values in the search of creative greatness.

Paolo Soleri Amphitheater featured at SITE Santa Fe Biennial

2016-08-08T01:28:00-04:00

Architect Conrad Skinner’s five-year research project into the history of the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater plays a lead role in much wider than a line, SITE Santa Fe’s 2016 biennial dedicated to new art from the Americas. The exhibition which features 35 artists and two archival projects including Skinner’s, runs at SITE Santa Fe through January 8, 2017.

Skinner’s project introduces visitors to much wider than a line with a 700 square-foot gallery that includes a photographic mural of the Amphitheater from which projects an arcing concrete bench, architect’s drawings reproduced from Soleri’s sketchbooks, and a micaceous clay model of the Amphitheater by artist Eliza Naranjo-Morse.

The Paolo Soleri Amphitheater re-imagined Western theater space by introducing Native American precedents and represented the turning point in Native American arts education that the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) initiated in the mid-1960s. The Amphitheater grew out of a creative collaboration betw...

Visionary architect Paolo Soleri has died at 93

2013-04-09T17:45:00-04:00

Visionary architect Paolo Soleri,the Italian-born designer of the experimental Arizona city near Cordes Junction called Arcosanti, died Tuesday. He was 93. Arcosanti officials confirmed the death in a statement. Soleri, one of the last living direct disciples of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed a $3.5 million pedestrian bridge in Scottsdale - Soleri Bridge & Plaza, the only completed bridge of the hundreds he designed. It is located southwest of Camelback and Scottsdale roads.

Interview with Jeff Stein on Soleri’s Model Sustainable City

2012-10-25T18:12:00-04:00

Arcosanti, some 42 years after it first was begun in 1970, is just a tiny fragment of what it intends to become — a town for a few thousand people. Right now, we’re at a population of a little less than 100. It’s pretty easy at that small scale to join architecture and ecology, but we have in mind some bigger ideas. While they certainly come from Paolo Soleri, they also come from Henry David Thoreau.