I’ve never been to Arcosanti, but it sounds like a really interesting place to visit or even live. Have any of you ever visited? What do you think?
Arcosanti was started in the 1970s by Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a spitfire who seeks an alternative to a car-dominant, hyper-consumerist society. With his so-called urban laboratory, Soleri, 88, hopes to eliminate the automobile, promote frugality and create a functional metro center run on the Earth’s resources: food from organic gardens, power from the sun, air conditioning from the shade, building materials from the natural surroundings. Though still a work in progress, Arcosanti in theory offers residents the same amenities as, say, a Manhattanite: housing, commerce, culture and dining.
James Towner | Posted in 
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May 9th, 2008 at 10:29 am
I’ve been there, around ten years ago and was run down back then, you could tell it was once a good concept but the execution lacking. I was glad to visit but also happy to leave.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Fixed the broken link.
I was wondering about how well it was kept because I know it’s pretty old now. I wonder if they’ve made improvements in the 10 years since you’ve been.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Arcosanti is a really unique project that has, for the most part, funded itself and has been built with unskilled volunteers - that’s pretty incredible. It is certainly not as clean and smooth as a Las Vegas themed mall, but we do what we can with what we are given. If you consider it as an educational project with 50,000 visitors/year and over 6,000 people who have come to be in educational programs, that is quite successful. People bring what they have learned to their own communities and disciplines.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Thanks for the comment! It is incredible you all have been able to achieve this! Sounds like quite a nice community.
May 11th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
My wife and I did the workshop and stayed on for a little over a year. As anyone that has been part of any group knows, there are certainly problems. I was very unhappy with some of what goes on there. Definitely a certain level of hypocrisy and failure to act in accordance with stated principles; but then how does that make Arcosanti any different from any church or political organization?
The workshop is definitely worth the cost and time, and living there is certainly a unique experience that you cannot find anywhere else. Give it a shot if you have the resources to do so. At the very least, visit and spring for the $8 for a tour.
May 28th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I visited it in the 70s and then again 5 years ago. Great vision, but seems like a place for counter-cultural hippy architects to go to avoid the real world. Not all, of course. But what I was was people living in chaos and filth. My girlfriend called it “the dirt pit.” To aim for designing beauty and then have such worse-than-college-dorm living conditions tells me the original vision has gone off track. It’s too bad; it was such an amazing and ballsy thing to attempt.