Revisiting Utopia

Arcosanti, which sought to fuse architecture and ecology 35 years ago in the Arizona desert, is more commune than community.

By MIJA RIEDEL
Published August 14, 2005

	[Photo: Cosanti Foundation
	Illuminated by huge windows, the Arcosanti Cafe is open to the public.
	Paolo Soleri, the Italian architect who left his work with Frank Lloyd Wright to create Arcosanti beginning in the 1970s, is shown in a 1999 photo.

The road to the future is unpaved. It is a winding trail of dirt and gravel, connected to Arizona's Highway 17 by a short stretch of asphalt. There are no billboards announcing your destination, for it has no restaurants or souvenir stands. In a landscape empty of most everything, it's easy to imagine most anything.

I was an hour north of Phoenix, driving east into rocky desert hills and staring hard for a glimpse of Arcosanti. In the past few days, I'd read that it was an ecological oasis, a futuristic ghost town, a bunch of beehives and a nice idea.

As my car descended through scrub brush, a building grew on the horizon. A room-sized cube protruded from its top floor, suspended in space. Large circular windows reflected the morning sun.

I parked in a dirt lot and trotted toward a compound of two- and three-story concrete buildings.

It was just after 9 a.m. The only open door led into a bakery. Before I could choose a pastry, a round, middle-aged baker waved me around the counter and pointed to a dozen croissants cooling by the oven.

"I've got ham and egg, spinach and mushroom, pepperoni pizza," said the baker, who introduced herself just as Gin. I chose spinach.

Gin mixed me a cup of "shade-grown, organic, cold-filter-processed coffee extract" and hot water. It was better than most coffee I could find in my coffeecentric home of San Francisco.

Nearly 60 years ago, Arcosanti's founder, Paolo Soleri, came to Arizona from Italy with a doctorate in architecture and an invitation to study with Frank Lloyd Wright.

Soleri left Wright after 18 months, his view for the future focused less on Wright's vision for homes than on innovative urban planning. Soleri wanted to build what he termed "arcologies": fusions of architecture and ecology. They were to minimize pollution and urban sprawl, and thus would improve quality of life.

Soleri's city blocks wouldn't spill over the land, but stack vertically. Residents would walk out the ground-floor doors into acres of unspoiled wilderness. Having driven recently through the sprawl of Los Angeles and Phoenix, I was intrigued by a vision of the future that didn't sprawl out, but grew up.

I soon learned that all of Arcosanti is still considered a construction site. I also learned that I wasn't free to roam unescorted.

The guide for the 10 a.m. tour - she was just Amber - was about 18. We sat in a corner of the gallery while 20 or so visitors studied hundreds of bells suspended from the two-story ceiling.

Amber pointed toward the 8-foot windows and noted, "There're no lights in here during the day." The room was bright as an art gallery but there wasn't a bulb burning.

"Human beings," Amber said next, "need 60 percent less embalming fluid today than they did 30 years ago." This was the first of a few intriguing nonsequiturs. "Pesticides and preservatives are preserving us before we die, which is really gross."

With that, Amber and I headed out into Soleri's "urban laboratory." Soleri broke ground in 1970 at Arcosanti (he said the term meant architecture plus ecology, in harmony with the environment). In 1976, Newsweek declared, "As urban architecture, Arcosanti is probably the most important experiment undertaken in our lifetime."

Each year, an average of 50,000 people visit the place. Coming from around the world, some spend a few hours, some stay for summerlong seminars. And some come to live.

Amber and I walked to a knoll shaded by Italian cypress and Spanish olive trees (no irrigation required, Amber said) and got a view of the Agua Fria River Canyon.

Currently, about 15 acres at Arcosanti are under construction or have been planted with basil, garlic, peaches, cherries or apples (neither fertilizer nor chemical insecticides are used). Goldfish ponds are scattered around the site to moisten and cool the air.

Around the corner, a few young men were digging, raking or watching each other dig or rake. In the past 30 years, students, Elderhostel members and other volunteers have mixed, poured and pounded Soleri's vision into concrete reality.

Amber led me into one of Soleri's trademark half-domes, here called apses. The sun was still low in the sky but the temperature warmed noticeably. The apses face south, allowing full sun in the winter and more shade in the summer.

Arcosanti's ceramics workshop is housed in one apse, its bronze foundry in another. We watched half a dozen young men in T-shirts and shorts pouring molten metal into bell molds.

Next door was the domed amphitheater in which Arcosanti hosts concerts; a waterfall runs down the center aisle.

To our immediate left was the lounge. "Trouble," said Amber, bugging her eyes. All summer long, she explained, visitors prop the doors open in hopes of catching a passing breeze, and residents close the doors to keep out shade-seeking snakes.

We headed for a patch of shade beneath an arch and I glanced up. The arch's underside was tattooed with bright red-and-yellow geometric patterns, a style that symbolized the 21st century back in the '70s. Certain sections were streaked and fading, the results of rain and time.

The arch seemed to house dueling visions of the second millennium: one brightly painted, one 30 years' worn.

Suddenly, past and future meshed like a double exposure. I realized I was standing in a construction site that was outdated before it was completed. It was a fitting set for The Jetsons or Star Trek.

Twenty minutes later, I reserved one of Arcosanti's few guestrooms for the night. I wanted to linger awhile in this outpost where time seemed uncommonly elastic.

Those spending the night can wander unguided in the morning, and they can have dinner in the cafe. At 6 that evening, I joined the overnight crowd: mostly younger than 30, speaking English, French or Japanese. The dominant look was knit caps and dreadlocks. In my black raincoat, it was as if I were FBI.

Energy conservation charts, futuristic architectural drawings and art by Arcosanti's residents covered the walls. I paid $7.95 (cash, no credit cards) for as much vegan and nonvegan buffet as I cared to eat.

As the sunlight faded, I grabbed a map and drove along a rutted, narrow trail that wound down behind the cafe. I paused on the terrace outside my room. On the cliff above, I could just make out the silhouette of Arcosanti. In the desert landscape, in the in-between hour bridging night and day, it looked as much like an archaeological excavation as a construction project.

Guest quarters were basic: a bed, a desk, a chair. The only flourish was a ceiling fresco of a long green sprout. I plugged in a space heater, realized it had a range of perhaps 18 inches, and spent the night choosing between cold desert stillness and a warmth accompanied by electrical clanging.

I woke at 7 and drew the curtain from the wall-sized window. Outside, the sun had just risen, lighting miles of red rocks, scrub and open space. I dressed slowly and imagined living in a fully functioning Arcosanti, one with coffee shops, grocery stores, schools and offices above me, acres of orchards and vegetable gardens below, a five-minute walk to work.

Fifteen minutes later, I climbed the stairs past a beautiful, unheated hot tub and the library: a dozen bookshelves and a few plants in need of water.

When the first day guests arrived, I headed to the bakery. While Gin poured my coffee, I mentioned that my father was an architect with an interest in alternative communities. Gin claimed Arcosanti was the most stress-free life she'd ever known. She invited me to consider it, as I had just an hour earlier.

A fellow in his early 20s padded in and pulled two cans of vanilla soda from the cooler. "These are the last two?" he asked Gin.

She studied the shelves, then: "I think so."

"The last this week or the last forever?"

He seemed distressed, but Gin didn't have the answer.

"The world is ending," he sighed. "It's 2005 and I don't have my flying car yet. Remember Elroy Jetson? He had his birthday in 2004; I remember."

Gin didn't care about flying cars; she said she wished some robot or other would take care of her laundry.

I walked outside, where yesterday's gray monuments to tomorrow hovered above me.

Standing in the past, squinting at the future, I saw nothing so clearly as the present: how far we had sprawled, how short we had fallen and how tall we might grow.

- Freelance writer Mija Riedel lives in the present, in San Francisco.

GETTING THERE: Several airlines offer connecting air service between Tampa Bay and Phoenix. Arcosanti is located 65 miles north of Phoenix, just off Interstate 17 at Exit 262 (Cordes Junction).

STAYING THERE: Rooms at Arcosanti are $20 to $75 per night, depending on the accommodations. For reservations, call (928) 632-6217.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: The Web site is www.arcosanti.org

[Last modified August 12, 2005, 09:25:04]