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Desert Utopia: Can we design the ideal city, or must it evolve?

United States Architecture News - Aug 07, 2015 - 12:09   6579 views

Desert Utopia: Can we design the ideal city, or must it evolve?

BABEL IID Arcology, elevation, population 550,000. From "Arcology: City in the Image of Man", original publication 1970. Photo courtesy Cosanti Foundation.

Jared Keller is a journalist, social media specialist, and amateur archer, writes about the ''ideal city'' and says that ''no one can design the perfect human community.''

In 1970, Paolo Soleri set out to build a utopia in the barren desert of Arizona. The Italian architect’s sojourn in the wilderness was an unusual one. Born in 1919 and educated at Turin’s renowned Polytechnic University, where he received the highest honours in architecture, Soleri moved to Arizona in 1947 to apprentice under Frank Lloyd Wright at the legendary architect’s home and educational centre, Taliesin West. Soleri spent a year and a half in Arizona and in Wisconsin before returning to Italy in 1950 to construct a massive ceramics factory in Vietri on the Amalfi coast, gaining international recognition for his innovative designs and masterful production of ceramic and bronze windbells.

Soleri fell for urban futurism during his first visit to the United States. Offended by the towering, inelegant skyline of Manhattan and the unchecked expansion of urban sprawl during the country’s post-war boom, Soleri envisioned cities that put people in a harmonious relationship with the natural world, and with each other.....Continue Reading

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