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.

Leaders of the School of Architecture at Taliesin and Cosanti share their vision for the future of “organic architecture”

2020-06-15T15:37:00-04:00

In recent weeks the leaders of the School of architecture at Taliesin have begun to make plans for moving the school to Cosanti, some eight miles to the west of the school's current site.

Last week, Archinect spoke with Dan Schweiker, Chair of Governing Board for Taliesin, Chris Lasch, Interim President of Taliesin and former Dean of the school, and Patrick McWhortor, President and CEO of Cosanti, to learn more about the planned transition.

Previously on Archinect: "Frank Lloyd Wright's School of Architecture at Taliesin shutters its doors after 88 years." Photo of Taliesin West, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Image courtesy of Wikimedia user Maarten Nijman.

Describing the process at hand, Schweiker explains that the school had moved on after unsuccessfully negotiating with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for approval to continue using the Taliesin West facilities moving forward. In January of this year, the school and foundation announced that the school would shut down at the e...

"Our architecture works harder than your architecture": Inside the city of Arcosanti

2016-10-06T13:03:00-04:00

Can cities be built not only to be harmonious with their environment, but to outperform traditional architecture? The residents of Arcosanti, Arizona, which is profiled in this video excerpt from the Atlantic, seem to think so. Part campus, part permanent dwelling, Arcosanti embraces the concept of "arcology," or the blending of ecology and architecture, to create a holistic, tightly engineered mini-metropolis:

The City of the Future

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.

Arcosanti “urban laboratory" or a retirement tower for golf-shy retirees?

2012-02-17T13:41:00-05:00

Mr. Soleri, however, will discuss his marvelous, flawed creation with disarming frankness. Has Arcosanti, for instance, lived up to its potential? “No. Don’t be silly,” he said, and then laughed.

Michael Tortorello recently visited Arcosanti to check in on the status of the famed, Utopian urban laboratory. He finds it in transition as last fall, Mr. Soleri finally retired (at age 92) as the president of the Cosanti Foundation. Jeff Stein, 60, formerly dean of the Boston Architectural College, is the foundation’s new president and under his guidance, the foundation is beginning to explore ways of developing a more profitable, privatized or at least self-sustaining model for shaping Arcosanti's future.

Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Design

2012-01-16T15:56:00-05:00

In the last decade, much has been written about architecture for the greater good, and it would seem that the field, as a whole, is invested in bringing design to underserved communities. Yet all of this talk — at conferences, in the press, at universities — has focused hardly at all on how to put together a career in social design.

On Places, Virginia Tech graduate Will Holman gives an honest report of his experiences volunteering, studying and working at Arcosanti, Rural Studio, and Youth Build. Does the architecture profession need to do more to support young architects who take this path?