Paolo Salieri, Italian born architect, visionary and recently theologian,
sees humanity in terms of evolution. A 3 billion year long struggle which
has resulted in Consciousness Man is not the end result of life. He is
only a stage in the adventure and he now must consciously take up the
burden of making the future miniaturisation complex the process whereby
each higher level of evolution rises above the preceding stage and a
process that was described by Tay de Chardin is applied by salii to the
urban environment. He arrives at the Archology, the high, three
dimensional one structure city that will permit man to reach higher levels
of consciousness by improving the connections and accessibility of people
and other elements within the city to each other. He provides a framework
within which man can bridge a chasm between matter and spirit.
This programme is about Arcosanti, a proto archology Soli is building in
the desert of Arizona. The material presented in this programme, including
the piano, was recorded at Arcosanti. In the background, you will hear the
sounds of construction going on.
Specific reason why we are there is to define an urban environment, and
since we don't have it. We are, um we are deprived. So it's a deprived
side. But, uh, since also I I'm convinced that, uh, the urban environment
that man needs is not available in too many places. I feel it is necessary
to to try to define it somewhere and and accept this condition of
deprivation. Palace is talking to a group of new works shopper. If you
went there five years ago, there was not in castles and coyotes
implants. Now, uh, now we have an average of, uh, I'd say 70 people
throughout the year. A mix of the permanent and transient. The transient
are people, mostly young. Many of them are architecture students, but not
necessarily so, who participate in a six week workshop and pay about $350
towards the cost of building materials, construction equipment and food.
So Le is able to match part of the contribution made by workshop as from
funds and from the sale of his balance books and the fees from lectures.
But the problem is that the this, uh, this constant turnover of people and
, uh, this is, uh, for the moment, it's unavoidable because in order to
keep going with the the work we need, uh, that input of cash and effort
that you are bringing. So since every one of you is limited in this in
this possibility and this ability, you have to take you in for six weeks
and then say, I'll see you later. There's something about the fact that
we're we're volunteering to do this work and we're not getting paid so
that I think it's a closer community than it would be if if everybody's
getting paid here, I think there's a special attitude about the
construction and just the work that goes into the place. The permanent are
the staff, all of whom originally participated in a workshop and decided
to stay on. They are paid subsistence wages, which start at $20 per week,
$15 of which goes to food. At present, the community is centred in what is
known as the camp, where minimum shelter is provided in buildings called
cubes. The cubes were built as an experiment to test the size of various
spaces. 8 ft cubes were found to be impractical. The space is too small,
sufficient merely for sleeping and for storing luggage. 12 ft cubes were
found to be more satisfactory. The added height gives more space to move
in, and it gives one's brain a chance to breathe, so to speak. Also in the
camp are bathrooms with showers and a communal space called the Octagon.
Tony Brown, site architect. Talks about life in the camp last year was
absolutely diabolical. Um, in the middle of the summer, nobody brought any.
There was nobody living across the river. There was no trucks. There's
nowhere to park. So we had about 100 and 40 people at one time living in
the camp. And, uh, it also was the year the leech Feld decided to quit on
us. So we were really in in terrible shape. So, uh, at the end of the year
, we were frantically trying to think of ways of getting new accommodation.
So what we did is on the new applications one you got. I guess this is
the bigger one, which had a lot more information on it. Uh, it also said,
bring, uh tents and sleeping bags and sleep in your trunks. So the problem
actually disappeared this year. Most people in the summer brought tents
and slept out in their tents, and the truck parking there sold a lot. It
just evaporated just by rewording the application, which is kind of neat.
Also in the camp is a kitchen where cooks provide a choice of meat or
vegetarian meals. Surrounding the buildings are gardens supplying such
produce as corn, beans, squash and tomatoes, and also some flowers. All
water is obtained from a well that was originally for the cattle that roam
on the ranch. I tried to talk with Mary, the person responsible for
keeping the camp and construction site supplied with all needed materials
. I am the gopher
and materials and food. Do you find it interesting? Fascinating,
especially for a gossip. You know, everything that's going on more or less
,
and I move very quickly. To keep up with you, you have to keep
frugality. An integral part of Soleri's philosophy is given practical
expression at our coon. In the recycling of all recyclable materials from
kitchen and the construction site, Soleri talks about the construction
process, which started in 1969. The process is very slow because of
problems with means and um, and so on. One advantage of being so slow is
that everybody gets used to it. But people are more used to to a now than
they were used 55 years ago because when we moved there five years ago,
but they saw were long hair, beards and promiscuity. Now, now I think
nobody, nobody both about that After we were there for a while, there was
a certain mountain, you know, front against us. But then that, uh,
collapsed because we were not that as bad as they thought we were. And one
reason was because they thought we are working very hard. Was it, of
course, is a sane which is being built on top of the You have to keep in
mind that the peculiar character of a as A as a prototype, the motorcycle
built in the garage, it doesn't have to fit a ther E, which is the normal.
You you you want to affirm something, so you you get to the point where
you get to affirm it. No matter how and where and what I asked whether the
building process will speed up in the future. I think it will have to just
because more people are here and telling other people that it's sort of a
nuclear fission type of thing. If it's done at all, it will probably be
completed within 20 or 25 years. I think I'm thinking now that that one of
the best way of of the getting this moving faster would be for for us to
involve to be involved in in order. We have to come up with serious things
in order to really have a backbone. So if we could get involved with the
same method in something that instead of being 40,000 people and being in
a way queer for many people would be more acceptable. I think that new
project would be very good for this project. A central part of the design
of Aryan is the absence or half domes that will be 200 ft high. These
abscess will have double skins or walls, and there will be living space
sandwiched in between the two walls. All living units at different heights
of the apps will have a unique space for the angle of the walls, changes
with height, the walls being almost upright, close to the ground and being
horizontal at the top of the apps. Next some workshops talk about the
buildings that have been completed so far. The farms here are really
terrific. Lots of need concrete and textures and plants and growing things
and need people. There's a couple of rather small abs, which are quarter
spheres, which are done in concrete, which are facing south to catch the
sun for the most useful part of the year, catching the heat in the winter
and giving shade in the summer. So they're sort of naturally climate
controlled. The water that is collected from the rain runoff runs out to
very long spouts and run down into the leaching field to, uh, eventually
water olive trees. It's, uh, very nice ecological touch. Paolo explains.
The design of the apps. There is something similar
and uh, that was built by me personally and was organised by me personally
, and I think it works fairly well. And I was working there for many years
, and I felt that, uh, doing ceramics in that environment was more than
than just work was pleasant. So I felt that if someone else connected with
me was going to the ceramic should have the same kind of pleasant, uh, the
same kind of environment. So instead of coming up with, uh, what you might
call a very efficient, rational ceramic work area I came up with with the
translation of that into this, I wanted to build a place where that
experience could be repeated with the additional advantages. And there's
also a large vault space, which is right now used as a construction area
and some living quarters off of those and in construction right now is a
three or four story restaurant. The techniques are more or less, uh,
something that Paulo is derived. You don't see it anywhere else in
commercial construction in terms of, uh, sealed casting and the way he's
using concrete in its most plastic form. Silt casting is a technique that
Paulo developed, uh, mostly as a crafts method that when he started
working with bells, digging out, uh, hollow forms in the earth and putting
clay into it and and, uh, extracting bells from this and then, uh, he got
to sort of using it in a reverse sense by building up dirt mounds and then
putting concrete over this and then scooping out the dirt, uh, from
underneath. Uh, this is the technique that you use down at Cassani in
Scottsdale. Uh, the apses here are more technologically developed. Uh,
from that they're a little more complicated and a little less earthy. Uh,
they're not directly built with mounds of earth, but scaffolding is put up
and dirt is put over forms there. And then, uh, ridges are carved into
that and then concrete put on the surface of that, and then the earth is
removed. There are also lots of, uh, textures and colours, which are
applied to the surface of the dirt, which is, uh, then left on the surface
of the concrete after the earth has been removed. So there are all sorts
of really nice colours and forms and textures on the buildings and in the
buildings and a part of the buildings here. I asked several participants
why they came to help build Arcosanti. I was kind of hanging a little bit
loose. Actually,
I was taught for two years and didn't like that and was sort of in a
transition. Didn't really know what I wanted to do. I kind of wanted to
get out to this area. And I heard Paul speak. It sounded interesting
enough so that at worst it would be a pleasant six weeks. And, uh, I guess
the the other one of the other contributing reasons is that there's also a
pretty good group of people here, has a chance to do reading and a chance
to a lot. For me, there's a lot of intellectual stimulation, and, uh, all
all the things combined is a sort of tough thing to be. You don't get a
chance to be in that sort of situation very often. I heard about it from a
friend of mine, and I've been pretty down on architecture and so called
progress of mankind, and I was looking for something better than what I've
seen. So I thought I'd try just the idea of our college brought me here in
the first place, but I come back because it's a special place. I know
people here, and I just like it here. I studied architecture for a while.
I was working in a couple of offices and was bummed out by that, and I
heard about the Apollo in school, and so I thought I'd come here and see
what was really going on when I was in school. Some friends of mine came
out here and they built the cubes. I came from Detroit and, uh, after
living in Detroit, I went to college in a very, uh, sort of an urban
environment. And at that time I left for about a year and lived very far
out in the secluded countryside. And at that time I realised the cultural
benefits, the social benefits, all the things that I missed from the city.
But yet I was unwilling to subject myself to the cities as they were, and
I read Paulo's book The City in the Image of Man and thought that he was
offering a possible solution to a person who wanted to have the benefits
of the natural landscape and have the cultural and social benefits of the
urban environment. I came out in a workshop, and I mixed concrete, and I
tied steel and dug ditches and in about three months became the camp
director, which was a job that is basically concerned with maintenance
work and keeping the community in a proper order. In your role as camp
director, what did you learn about people's reasons for coming? I think
most people come with a very limited knowledge about what's here. But
they've come because they've either read Paula's books or they've heard
that a man named Celery has some type of a viable alternative. And I think
one of the unique things about it is that they feel it's very
comprehensive and when they come, they find that we have something very
far from an archology here. Circumstances are such that you can't avoid at
least part of this expectation of paradise or utopia and finding out that
instead of sweating and surgery. But I think they all go away with feeling
that it's a very unique experience in that they live and work and eat and
play and discuss and learn with the same people for the duration of their
stay here. And it is in a way isolating people in sort of a brainstorming
session about the problems that we're trying to deal with here, a workshop
of comments on the community. The community is too homogenous. Everyone
comes from the same general background, although people vary widely in
their interests and so forth. Basically, we're all of the same age group
from the same economic background, and I think it will really be important
to get a better mix of people in the working community. Families are
starting to come in next year. There's a programme starting for them. I
think it would really be helpful to tap some older citizenry and get some
skilled, retired, middle aged people here that were out at a much greater
complexity to the community here. As it grows, there have been older
people at a Nancy Gusman claims to be the first such I have followed the
work of Powell since 1957. I was anxious to see what this design would
really be like. So I wrote him and uh said that I would phone him and that
we could talk about it being, uh, an older lady. Maybe I wouldn't be so
suitable to the test at hand. He thought it might be an interesting
experiment to see how an older person might survive. And we agreed that
after three weeks, if I was too old that I would find something else to
less invigorated and happily, I was able to stay. How does your experience
here fit in with the scheme of your life? We're at the time in life now
that our family is gone, that we should think about different patterns and
particularly search for different patterns and different ways of
conducting our lives. I don't feel any, uh, private need to escape
anything. I I have enjoyed a very active life. Nancy Gusman talks about a
wine tasting party she organised That was a wonderful opportunity for me
to share a little saved up things so we could have a special day. So we
had three different kinds of wine and three different kinds of cheese. And
I think he had a lovely warm exchange, really. On Sunday evening, with
some rice Fla and a little curry sauce and, uh, some dancing and what I
think I would call a lot of good warm vibrations. Next, Tony Brown site
architect discusses the development of the building process since the
early days when you take it in sort of overall perspective, from four
years ago to what's here Now, we we've really come a long way, and it kind
of illustrate that, um, what I did was I brought down some of the
information that we had early on in the process and also some information
of what's happening at this point in time. Um, this folder here is all the
information from the start of our KANTI up to the third year. This
contains pretty much all the drawings, all the notes, the building of the
cubes, the building of plywood City three years, three years to give you
sort of a, well, sort of an idea of what's in here. I just thought I'd run
through it fairly briefly. This is the field drawing for the plumbing in
the in the vault. It's done on the back of the drawing. And, uh, this is
the This is a real vinyl drawing, this one. It's the only drawing that
shows how the plumbing works in the storage areas under the Well, there's
no copies of it. This is the original, and that's why we keep it real safe
in this. I didn't even get the sort of general idea of how things were
done in the early days. Reasons these were done like this wasn't just, uh
, sort of out of sheer vindictiveness that it was because it was only sort
of two people running the whole operation, and, uh, the buildings were
being done as the drawings were being drawn without drawings. It's a
fairly wasteful, time consuming process. Um, what we generally do is we
try and get base construction drawings together. In other words, the
building itself in terms of walls, floors, uh, windows, and so on, uh,
without getting into the detail of how the finished cabinet work's gonna
be done or the windows or whatever, Uh, that allows us to start a little
bit ahead of, uh, having a complete set of working drawings finished.
We're in a little better position than a a normal, uh, contractor
architect relationship. Uh, because in the normal situation, you have to
have a set of drawings that show absolutely everything so that anybody
who's contracting for the job can sit down and can take off every nut and
bolt in the building and then give you a price for it. We have a little
leeway in as much as we can put in a lump sum budget figure for, say,
finish work based on the square footage of the building. And if we go a
little above or a little below, it's not so desperate as it is in the real
world. we're talking in terms of, uh, developers profits and so on in 1972
I guess, was the first time we did a schedule. Our problem here is that
our labour force fluctuates wildly at, uh, from sort of 10 people up to
100 and 70. Also, our money situation fluctuates wildly. Uh, sometimes you
don't have money to do things because it tends to be a fairly hand to
mouth process, and our machinery is not incredibly reliable or some of it
isn't. Our problem in terms of scheduling is we have so many variables, it
becomes a much looser process. However, that didn't stop us from, uh,
trying to schedule. So what we did the first year is 1972 that we did a
schedule and it's still hanging in the Octagon, I think. Which it might
give you some amusement to go and look at it. It was incredibly optimistic.
So then what we did is that over 72 we got feedback which said this is
ridiculous. Over the years, the schedule has become more accurate about
the schedule for 1975 Brown says we have a fairly optimistic schedule
again, but uh, it's optimistic, and as much as we know it's optimistic,
whereas the other years we thought we were right on the money we have, uh
, it's sort of two schedules. In a way, the first schedule is an ideal
schedule, assuming that we get enough money to do it now, within that, uh
, schedule, we have a series of items that can be knocked out so that if
we don't get the money, we can reduce our overall work without, uh,
completely disrupting everything. For example, we have a figure in of
$25,000 for kitchen equipment. Now, if we get that money, then we can
install that equipment. If we don't, we can still build the building
around it and try and put the equipment in next year. Up to this point, we
haven't had any budgets at all. We just, for example, last year we just
built until we ran out of money and they didn't bring us anything anymore.
So we're going into a process which is called a ballooning budget, which
is a A system whereby you you set your budget for one year. Uh, whatever
you don't get for that year, put that into the next year, which will lose
that budget. So what we're trying to do for next year is we set out a
budget which I think was, uh, $270,000
and something for, uh, materials, equipment and supplies. Wow, that's a
pretty huge increase. Uh, we've done an assumption on our budget next year
in terms of increasing at the same rate as it did the eight month first
eight months of this year. And if that happens, uh, we can get a certain
percentage of that money. And but we still need an additional $150,000
of income to do all the things that we'd like to do next year. That's the
budget figure that we'd like someone to go out. And if somebody said
Here's 100 and $50,000 we know where we could spend it and we could. We
know we could spend it now. The benefit of the project The budget this
year, in terms of materials and supplies and equipment again was, uh, a
around $90,000. That's a very approximate guess. There's also another
factor in that in as much as the heavy equipment. The the 50 tonne Crane,
the batch plant and the back have all been bought by a guy called Skip
Seger, who's the president of furniture manufacturing company, and he's
bought them, and he's allowing us to use them and pay them off at a very
low rate, which is to be $1000 a month. If we'd had to buy that equipment
ourselves, it would probably have taken up a whole operating budget for
this year. Next, we examine the educational aspect of the arson workshop.
Many people expect it to be more of an educational institution than it is.
Our facilities have not allowed us at this time to put too much emphasis
on the teaching. So the intellectual life or the social life is utterly
limited. It's almost non existent. An important part of the workshop
experience is that weekly meetings, so he has, with all participants a
basic understanding of what Solari is about, or even if he's read, you
know, he's ploughed his way through matter, becoming spirit or sitting in
the image of man. But the point is, if you come here, um, I mean, like,
for example, I read a lot of that stuff. And yet I come I came here
expecting, um, or hoping for clarification and and a real, you know, a
real perspective on on on all of that which, um, that's what solar
meetings are for. He's not gonna lecture. You have to ask the question,
and that's what the whole thing is. If you come here with questions, he'll
answer them to the best of his ability. And you can even ask him the same
question every time. And he'll go into it every meeting. But that's what
he comes here for. But nobody's you come here. This is a This is not a
classroom experience. They also said that in the brochure, we are
interested in augmenting the educational elements that we can offer here.
And, uh, I think this will begin in 1975 and become much more obvious in
1976. But still, the accent is on construction, and the learning process
has to be found. There fundamentally been doing pre casting, glazing and
digging in the pit. Have any experience construction experience before you
came here? No, it was pretty easy working in the pit. All I had to do was
pick up a chisel and chisel rocks all the glazing. Um, I just followed Tim
around for a while until I caught on to what he was doing and the same
thing with Charlie. When I was doing pre casting, I was interested in that.
So I asked her to work with him. That's what I really like doing the most
carpentry. Mostly it's been a long time building forums and then, uh,
finish carpentry. That's just up the hill and then just do all kinds of
projects on my own cosmic kin. What kind of work? What kind of sunscreen
have you been doing? Arco soI T shirts. This is what we've been working on
for the whole six weeks. We poured £4250 concrete planners 7 ft six by 19.
By 17. If we had a little more time, we'd plant them after the chain hut
, our tonne and a half chain hoist that is, uh, used to roll over each of
these flower pots because we cast them upside down. Other tasks on the
site, such as welding, plumbing and operating, and maintaining the heavy
equipment, tends to be done by staff members.
John Sandgren a works hopper comments on the work scene as a whole. I
think it's great. I have never seen anything like it before. People
singing and whistling around the site is just phenomenal. Perhaps an
outstanding example of the world to work is when a semi trailer load of
cement in £90 bags arrives on the site, everyone is marshalled to unload
it into the cement shed.
You just before work.
What about?
No, sir, I don't. I think it's a pretty good crew. That's what I think.
You got a lot of people here.
No, no. This is the first time I've been in here. No, they told me that I
get unloaded pretty fast. They told me it would be by hand, though. Yeah,
they said that they'd get a bunch of people up here and really start going
so far, You got to wait till the last bags in here.
No, I'm scared. Who's got the last bag?
I like to be the last bag.
Is there a record pending or is there Is this all? What sort of prize do I
win for being the last bag?
The bag? Yeah, Come on, let go.
Yeah,
the day I think the people's will to work and to finish something that
they have pride in is an advantage which you won't get in another
construction site. Which, uh, that's one reason I'm glad I came. I've
learned so much in just doing it much more than a book had ever tell me
how to do. How do you feel about Paulo's relationship to to the
construction work? The fact that he's here quite a bit of the time, at
least once a week is a very good thing, only because at this point in the
archology growth, it's essential that he be here to to sort of oversee
what's happening. And, uh, unfortunately, many times, even in the in the
real world is like everyone seems to call it, Um, many. Some architects
never even see the buildings that their their company has designed, and
that is an architecture to me. So you you feel that it's it's good that
pard takes an interest in the smallest detail of the building. He's a
visionary at heart, and, uh, these times, which he comes up to the site,
sort of, uh, give him some reality to the vision that he's sort of built
in his mind. And to see it being put into concrete and steel is, uh is a
nice thing and that some maybe we will mould some of his ideas as to the,
uh, the difficulty in building with this certain material and, uh, how it
will work in the future in other arch.