where, uh, in the College of Architecture at Arizona State University in
Tempe. Uh, and, uh, it's 27th of June, and we have now had two weeks of
temperatures over 100 and 10 degrees. And Paolo Soleri, I want to know why
you live here.
Uh, I'm one of the lunatics.
Well, uh, lunatic implies you're in love with the moon, Not the sun.
I'm stuck.
Well, it it seems like it's, um uh, an important part of your idea of how
man ought to live in this earth. Uh, that he ought to live, uh,
sympathetic with nature. Uh, and it seems, uh, increasingly that, um,
Phoenix, uh, in the middle of the summer is not just a place to do it.
Well, you can do it if you do it in the right way. And this room, it's one
way of doing it. I don't know if it's going to be proved as the right way
this building.
I would agree, but I wonder whether you could point to any examples here
in Phoenix that, uh, you would find appropriate
that are presently existing? Probably not.
Do you think that there is that possibility? You better be
well, one. I mean, for instance, one solution could be that we could live
here for the eight months that it's really, uh, beautiful and, uh, move to
the beach. Uh, the other employees and, uh, a degree of affluence. Which
my question mark on our real And yet the economic factor may be more
modest to move the population than to keep it here.
Under the present conditions that they might be right under ideal
conditions, they might not be right.
Thank goodness you can erase it.
Erase the blanks. How? How do you respond to the concepts of mobility
which have been advocated by certain recent, uh, thinkers and groups who
are quite influential in terms of architectural and urban ideas?
Well, I don't know. I don't know if you are talking about, um, unlimited
mobility or if you're talking about migrations. The order you were, you
are suggesting that you are in a certain climate and you try to avoid the
the peaks, the bad peaks and the climate by migrating so that this would
be a cyclical migration.
And then maybe if we organise society on those terms, that and be making
sense, even
if we extend this process to the whole of mankind, the whole mankind
migrating, unruly.
I don't think it's something that we might want to, uh, get into him. We
are not ready for that anyhow. It would be tremendously cost. Cost wise
would be would be a bankruptcy, I think,
uh, to be more specific, your own, uh, proposals, uh, to date have tended
to be rather hard environments in the sense that they're fixed. Uh, and
they tend to suggest a rather permanent, uh, and stable focus for
settlement. Uh, have you, uh uh, have you abandoned or have you ever
considered, uh, the ideas of a more flexible and dia, Let's say, kind of
of, uh, settlement and closure. Um, let's say throwaway architecture or
movable,
I don't know what that happens that that thing might be. It seems to me it
tends to pile up gigantic waste heaps in all corners of the universe. So
the diphone might be It might be more, uh, illusion. Illusory than, uh
than real. If if we move from the from the possibility of having people
moving with a with a little bag or a little suitcase to people moving with
their own houses. We can see immediately the the amount of, uh, or
materials hardware, energy that are needed for this process. So I think in
a way it was more progressive when people would be moving with their own
suitcases to the vacation, the houses
in the countryside, then now buying, having a house and buying a mobile
home and moving your home with yourself. I think this is a very good
indication of what Pop is. And yet we have seen some demonstrations in the
use of pneumatic buildings where, indeed one could get a building inside a
suitcase. Are those areas that that you've thought about again? I think we
are. We are talking about a more of a of A, an abstraction and a reality,
because example, you can put your your house that this skin into your
suitcase, but you cannot put the services for this skin, so to have to
have something that shelters you from the rain or the wind. It's one thing
to have something that serves you on your daily activities or something
else, and you cannot put that in a suitcase.
Uh, you've really identified there, uh, one of the key architectural and
urban problems. Uh uh. A single person by himself, uh, will seldom foul
foul his own nest. But, uh, when we have conurbations of a million people
, uh, we seem to be wallowing in our own excretions. Um, how do you feel
that your approach is different from anybody else's? In terms of handling
this problem of service
I, I don't think the problem, uh, murder probably is not put rightly,
because if there is something which is very clearly indicated by
experience is that, um that you can obtain efficiency when you are able to
have a multiplicity of things going on together. So the more you isolate
any kind of, um, system, the more you tend to make this system, uh,
wasteful.
So you're suggesting that the critical factor is the integration of these
various systems of service.
Integration comes from integrity and integrity. Is the ability to to take
the many digits or the many aspects of a very sizable question or problem
and see how they can interact in the best way possible at a certain
historical moment?
And if you go the other way, which is the isolation of the individual, the
individual. Evidently somewhere you are breaking down the integrity of the
system.
Um, earlier in your career, you used a term bio technic, which was a way,
uh, perhaps of expressing, uh uh, uh, A sympathetic relationship of
biological needs. Uh, with, uh, technical means. Uh, I notice you don't
use that term anymore, but it seems as though the idea is still very
prominent in your attitude.
I'm glad you talked about my career.
Well, I I had one.
Why? Why have you dropped the word? Why? Why don't you use that
terminology? The bias? I'm not using the word I'm. I'm using very much the
the the concept. Because when I when I'm suggesting that technology comes
before science, what comes before? Anything else? I'm saying that
that the instrument T is that which are fostering lives in a way preceding
even life itself. So the biotechnology it's a technology that comes before
man invented the machine or the tool.
In other words, the
all of the evolutionary process that came before man was a
biotechnological process.
All the problem that came after the man appeared on earth was a about a,
um a process which involved biotechnology and the technological hardware,
as we do not know.
And the more we can integrate the the biological aspects, which includes
the phys, the psychological aspects with the hardware technology, the more
we are able to stay away from the biggest mistakes.
Um, just following that line of thought, I think some people may assume
that in your case, by advocating the plumbing first that you are perhaps
bringing up man after, um
uh, I. I suppose that in the integration of of these problems, uh, it's
difficult to put one thing first, but, uh, in fact, are you not, uh, a
very strong advocate, uh, of, uh, identifying the technical framework
first and then attempting to, uh, bring in man as an interacting agent?
Yeah, if by technical we understand what we are. What do we mean? Uh, the
the technical medias you can say are the the regional particles. How how
many are there and what kind they are. Everybody knows better than I do.
So those were those were the building blocks that we were presented with
from the beginning. What? What would you use? Atomic articles and
particles that are making for the atomic and then the molecular and so on.
So if those are the technical means, definitely. I put those ahead. All
the of, um of, uh, the mental process that will organise those those
elements. And naturally, that goes against the religious idea that God is
first. And then from God comes everything else. I said God is last, and,
uh, we we move toward God by the manipulation of those particles.
And this is this philosophically is how you identify with the Tar de
Chardin concept of Omega. No, because he he's a he's a Catholic,
and he definitely states that he
conceptual work does not infringe in the beliefs of the of the Catholic
Church in the existence of God.
So you're saying that that that one of the differences is that he believes
that God is is preexistence, whereas in your case, you see that as an
ultimate goal? Yeah,
uh, to, uh, to return to this, uh, idea of the relationship of technical
means to B biological needs. Uh,
it it could almost be suggested that you're putting yourself in a godlike
role in the kind of approach that you're advocating. Yeah. Any any
particle that has become has achieved some kind of consciousness. He is a
gun maker. So it's not that I'm I'm the gunmaker. And you are not. You are.
And, uh, the the worm is and the trees and so on. There are degrees
degrees by which you you make God. So each of us shares, uh, some
fragmentary potential, uh, in godlike directions.
And you see this as part of the vector system of humanity
of life in general? Yeah.
Where did you, um, first become conscious of, uh, Tar de Chardin in in his
ideas? When I read somewhere that he died, and I didn't know he existed.
And, uh, when we were told that he died, we were told that he was a great
thinker and there was some articles written on him. So it was his obituary
that, uh, gave you gave you the first attention, which was in the, uh I
think I got it from Time magazine. Oh, bless them. I know,
uh, and then you, uh, you began to read. You did read some of his original
work. Yeah, I got I got everything I could get in the French version,
which was the
You were surprised. I dare say at the congruence between some of your
ideas. I was elated, elated, elated.
Um, still, uh, you personally have not associated with any of the Chardin
groups, Uh, which have, uh, formed throughout the world. You have? Yes.
They asked me to be a What is it, saint? Not not a trusty
a consultant.
The part of the organisation which, uh, which this is the one in New York.
The teller. The Sheldon. Um what is it? Foundation? Uh hm. I think it's
the only one existing. Well, there's There do seem to be, uh, colonies and
groups scattered throughout the country and elsewhere. Uh, I'm not sure
that I'm not sure that they're all directly associated with each other.
What do you think your contribution
might be? Well, I sent them a number of papers about theology because I
told them that maybe they changed their mind when, uh, when they read
those things and they didn't, they still had to me as a consultant.
No,
um, your interest in theology is relatively recent. Um uh, as a boy, or as
a young man, you managed fairly successfully to, uh, avoid the established
church. No, until, uh, until about 18 or so. I used to go to church every
Sunday. Were you a choir boy? Uh, in elementary school And what happened
at the age of 18? Oh, no. Long before that I I was going to church because
I enjoyed the the experience, experiences and the experience was, uh, both
aesthetic and ritualistic and social and social, uh, as well as was there
any theological component? Oh, that there was, uh, some kind of, um
emotional, I guess. Uh, yeah, aspects
in the sense that it was pleasant to get into this building or when any
one of the buildings that any one of the churches and, uh, spend half an
hour there.
Uh, and then, um, what came? What came about around the age of 18? As I
was saying, by by then I I couldn't really see myself as a devout Catholic.
I mean, I was out of the church, but you you were not willing to take
those parts that you could still take you.
You left everything? Yeah, but there was no no traumatic moment. What has
brought you back into, uh, a stream of of appreciation of the theological
problem?
Well, the certain point you are presented with the with the question of
the
what? What do you make
of ecological evolution? For instance, what is it? Well, and after turning
that thing over and over yuan by seeing that the ecological evolution is a
theological evolution, it's a process of making, uh, uh the physical into
the metaphysical.
How long ago did this, uh, sort of reveal itself to you?
Well, again, it wasn't a revelation. It was a slow, you know, putting a
little thing there, a little thing there and then more or less suddenly
decided that that's the time when you have to do something about it. But
it's happened. What about Only within the last 10 or 15 years? Yeah. Oh,
not much later. The the triggering thing was when I when suddenly I felt
that I could take the the word simulation and what it implies
and somehow finding out that the religion is simulation religion as an
established set of, um, or revolutions or rules or dogmas and so on.
And it it sounds very blasphemous. It sounds very, you know, uh, nasty,
but, uh, it's not intended at all that way.
How How do you define your use of the word simulation Breath temp
to, uh, to make something real before this reality has happened To
anticipate this failure? Um, well, whether that's an art or science, in
any case, it's anticipatory. It's a very peculiar Capac. Ability of
mankind is distinguished from the other animals.
So it's very natural that the region came with mankind because it if it
didn't come, something would have been missing in the in the mind and in
the in the structure of mankind. It had to come because, uh, man had to
decide sooner or later what the meaning of of him of himself was and what
the meaning of life was. So the best thing he could do was to come into
this process of anticipation.
How do you This may be very personal, but how do you feel in your own life
? Uh uh,
in particular that you are practising this anticipatory,
uh,
idea?
Well, we are all practising with some participatory idea. At least in our
best moments, we say that we are not as good as we should be. So we make
another little effort to become slightly better.
And this effort makes puts in a particle of
of, uh, divinity into the the process of the Rio.
Uh, it it seems to me that from one point of view, um, that approach, uh,
may encourage a certain, uh, fantasising, which, uh, separates us from
reality.
He said, definitely.
Uh, so, in effect, you're fantasising.
No, I don't. Well, yes, I'm fantasising. Everybody does.
Yeah. You get up in the morning, I you decide. Now I'm going to fantasise
for two hours. But then Good.
No, no, you're not fantasising in a in A in a sense, that you state very
clearly that unless you do it, there is nothing else that is going to do
it because God doesn't doesn't exist. I am responsible for the making of
God.
So if I If I keep repeating that to myself, evidently I just waste my time
in your time and everybody's time. If I attempt somehow to, uh, to
understand what that might imply within my capacities, then I might
attempt to do a little effort to do something in order to to get this
thing going, if it was even for an instant. So I would say that
fantasising is when you say? Um, I am good. I'm bad. I do this and do that.
But no matter what happens, God is there, and he's going to take care of
me and my Children and and my brothers and so on. But if I if I tell
myself that there is not such a thing, that can take care of anything, but
I am responsible for the care of for everything. Then, uh, I better get
down to to something of substance,
uh, to relate that approach to what your experience was early in life. Um
, do you practise any outward ritual, or is this mostly, uh, the mental
and spiritual process? Uh, I have rituals, but they are very, very down to
earth rituals. I have routines. You have routines, but they're not, uh,
they're not religious rituals. I mean, when you when you water the olive
tree, Uh, that's that's that's a daily, uh yet in an in Well, what I
wonder is, to what extent is that a direct religious experience for you?
Well, any anything that you do
being part of this attempt to build,
uh, the sacred it's part of the experience,
but naturally this this is almost automatic in in any one of us. So it's
not that every time you start doing something you say Now I'm going to do
another divine act. You are just very humbly carrying on your business of
living. And if the whole thing comes to be together into the art of living
, then you got something going.
So you see, uh, construction. Really? Uh uh, as a as a potential sacred
ritual, like like anything else? Yeah. No, there are. There must be some
activities which couldn't be considered,
uh, would say as having sacred potential
that those have to be, uh, the discrimination has to come from, um from
your inside.
I mean, it would I think it would be difficult, for instance, to identify
some of the Adolf Hitler's activities with, uh with the sense that we're
talking now.
But at the same time, you could say with a certain certainty that the
phenomenon of the forties, with all its ugliness, was already something
far higher in the making of something metaphysical than the phenomenon 40
millions of years before.
So you're suggesting that even in its blackest moments, uh, things were at
a higher level than once. Mhm, if nothing else. Because those blackest
moments are are, uh, triggering things which are incredibly, uh, um,
what do you call it?
So which you have to have a great evidence things happened during during
those those years that they they were of a great asset for mankind.
Uh, one of the phenomena of, uh, uh, religious people, at least in the
Western world, seems to be, uh, their, uh, attempt to become, uh,
evangelical about their experience and, uh, to become missionaries of the
faith. Um, how have you become a missionary of your faith?
That's a very tricky I said
yes. Um, if we believe that we we really stand for, uh, for some kind of a
reverential condition, some kind of, uh, sacred phenomenon. Then we cannot
, uh, give up proselytising. We have to extend this phenomenon as as much
as we can. So one of one of the one of the tasks of life is to to make
more life. They make more life, which is more sensitive to to what
surrounds it. So in a way, if you don't seize, you are, um you are not
doing what you are supposed to be doing at the same time as you were
saying, Travers very often becomes a a distortion of, uh, just about
anything good or, uh or just or compassion. So there is a great amount of
danger in becoming an evangelist.
You're You're conscious of that dangerous or
and I suppose,
Well, how would you identify? Uh, the way in which you are, uh, extending
your beliefs?
Ho. How do you How do you feel your your
well being? Most effective. Well, I'm just beginning now, uh, for in the
papers that have not been published mhm and writing papers, You you feel
it. It's going to be primarily through writing.
Well, I, I can lie there and I can speak. I I'm sure dog, not Not
everybody thinks the same way. But, uh
uh, But you I mean, you you have made no attempts to, um uh to build a
public it right or to to preach or to, uh, to insist that your, uh,
apprentices
should follow in your footsteps.
Not yet. That's coming. I don't know. We'll see. OK, going forward,
falling in in your footsteps. It might not be the best way of putting
because I might be a devil. You know, I might be a very I'm very, Um I
might say, do this, but don't Don't do what I do as most of us do,
but I might try to present a certain, um, line of thought and then say if
you feel that there's something to it, see what you can do about it.
Uh, but certainly, uh, the direction that you've taken, uh, does not lend
itself to the sort of, uh, religious organisation that most of us are
familiar with. Stylized ritual. Uh uh uh, encapsulation,
uh, in fairly rigid forms.
Well, one reason is because what I'm advocating is the reverse of of the
religious frame of reference By saying that you are You are not working
according to a certain, uh, demands put up by your father, your divine
father, by by saying that we are the maker of the sun God, evidently, you
are. You are. You are turning over the whole the whole, uh, theological,
um, the way of thinking.
So therefore, we shouldn't expect, uh, conventional theological
expressions. Not necessarily because this doesn't mean that you are
rejecting all forms of, uh of Orthodox religions or any form of existing
religions. What you are suggesting is that we have to be careful when we
are when we feel like when we say I'm a Catholic or I am a Protestant or a
Buddhist and so on and that by saying this we are also clear in in the
understanding that ideally we are seeking something and we are seeking
something that we are the maker of. So we are responsible for this future
Catholic God. We don't we are. We are not responsible to to the father God
that that the church tells me exist. They are waiting for me responsible
for the making of a sun God of which I am the father You ever thought of
it? So when you use the word sun God, you spell it SON.
Well, then we can go into the
well that that is a play on words because you you have also tended to
focus on the sun as a kind of symbol. That's the That's the father God,
the son suns. Yes, and as a father of God, it's a very you know, it's a
it's a firmness.
So you have to be careful when you when you look at a firmness and saying
, Well, this is a God
and this son, Father, this F
in the process of time has has allowed consciousness to develop, and this
consciousness is going to Is the maker of the sun
the tragedy?
Uh, by identifying the S the sun, you, uh, identify very clearly that
human life is terminal, that it will have an end to the same extent that
the sun is going to burn out.
But there again, it's, um
you can just, uh I apologise. But, um,
if the if the trans the transformation that we have been witnessing of, uh
mass energy into something more subtle can be made universal, let's say
then it's not necessarily true that with the end of the physical universe
or the end of a solar system, consciousness ends.
In fact, this this idea of complex demilitarisation, which was the one
that really pushed me into this theological problem, would tend to say, If
you push it to the limit, then the moment comes when everything is
containing nothing,
the utter miniaturisation of everything. And at that point, you realise
you only my good God
so that that means the the reversal again of the idea of the Big Bang
where you have a a one big atom, and from this big atom, you get the
universe. It's the opposite from the universe. You get a big atom, which
possibly it's it's a divinity,
all conscious, all powerful, all in all in kind compassion and so on. Uh,
so on on that end of it, when you use the term so SOM, uh, as the ultimate
progeny, it is It is that final unity that approaches nothing.
Well, nothing. Nothing in size. Everything. Uh, yeah. So it's the media
has become the message you be. You begin with the media with no message.
And you can say that this media is made of, um, almost an infinite number
of little gods All the particles, the physical particles totally
segregated, connected only by few physical mm forces or whatever you wanna
call them. And then slowly from this, uh, total scattering this polytheism
, which is a total polyta, you build more and more, uh, centred god or sub
God, with the tendency of coming out with the mono monotheistic final
expression, which is the Omega Point.
So then again, it's a reversal of the process so that we tend to attribute
to God, uh, at at the beginning was the logos was the word. Well, at the
end is the world, uh, from my point of view at the beginning, it's, uh, is
the universe of mass energy with its own statistical loss.
How do theologians react to having an architect messing in their field? I
? I don't know. I didn't understand. I
How, uh, how do these thoughts relate to, uh, architecture?
Well, as I was saying, part of this process came out because I had to to
see what the logical consequence of complexity miniaturisation would bring
in.
So in this process of going from total polis to monotheism, use TO on on
the city in the city
and yet to stumble in the city because the city is a, um it's a larger
in a way, a larger reality of the single, um dwelling.
And it's more central to this gathering and to this desegregation to this
, uh, integration or things
in. In that sense, I tend to, you know, to introduce the of the other day
that the city of God, because you are really dealing with one of the most
powerful instruments. We have to, uh, divinity
and the misuse of it. It's a it's a crime.
You you you see the city as, uh, the ultimate artefact of humanity.
Not not ultimate, but it definitely a, um, one of the most, um, desirable
and the most profitable instruments for the making of, uh
oh, good.
You mentioned the term, uh, Civitas day. Uh, this, uh, suggests a rather
strong association with certain mediaeval thought,
uh, as a boy, Uh, I assume that you studied
well, I didn't study. I read, but, uh, unfortunately, I seem to be
forgetting what I read
after.
So presumably it's in there somewhere. Oh, can you remember who you read?
So at some, some Saint Augustine I read, um,
some of the Greek thinkers, some of the German thinkers,
some of the most mm mm, contemporary French thinkers.
But, uh, I I'm not I'm not a scholar by far. I mean, I I wish I would have
Did, uh did you ever read, um, Thomas Moore's Utopia? I. I only got into
the the English language
by default by default. I'm still trying to forget it. I'm not trying too
hard.
So, uh, you see, um, your particular involvement in the city, uh, as as
part of this, uh, if you like divine responsibility of man.
Yeah, I felt much more. Um, sure,
in my drive, uh, in what I call the theology, because you need some kind
of a name when I when I was able to to tie this within a larger frame of
reference, which I tend to call a theological reference frame of reference.
Um,
the term archology
is probably, uh, of all of the words that you've invented. The one the one
that may stick. Um,
can can you explain what it means and how you got there?
Ok, uh, I'm always been a little, um, put off or put out by the by the
profession. You mean the architecture, That question? Because I felt that
there again, you need to have, uh, a final reference, which is as some
substance in order to be able to act. And the frame of reference of
architecture is environment
evidently, and the physical environment, specifically not not only the
physical, but evidently the physical environment. It's basic to the
professional architecture. So what? What to do to express, maybe in
polemic terms or in, uh, in, uh, strong terms, this thing in one word
where you say architecture is an ecological cancer,
naturally. And then you have to specify that the ecology doesn't belong
just to the lizard or to the to the forest. Ecology is the reality
in a certain corner of the universe, and this reality includes all the
existing creatures in this corner of the universe. So ecology includes,
man includes the mind of man, includes the drives of man and so on.
Oh, so architectural and ecology,
Uh, you're implying that that this relationship doesn't have to
necessarily take place on a vast, gigantic scale. It can just a very
modest, intimate kind of situation.
He was that they the tenets or the methodology is the rejection of the
gigantic
and the gigantic is, um
uh, is the the pathological
uh, it It seems as though that the word archology has tended to be
associated with some of the gigantic proposals that you have made, uh,
missing this kind of of meaning.
Well, if, uh if the person that, uh
believe is in a certain context, let's say Phoenix doesn't realise that
this contest, you gigantic, then this person has to do some homework.
It's gigantic because it doesn't relate what to what we call the human
scale
relate so little with the human scale that Phoenix practically It's a
sequence of isolation booths that you are trying to bridge between each
other as quickly as you can in order to not to be fried on the on the
pavement or
but it. But in effect, the term archology could apply to a very modest one
family house, uh, which was in a sympathetic relationship to its
surroundings.
But we, uh,
we are on this planet with its own limitations, and we multiply ourselves.
So when when you introduce the NUM the element of number
in, uhin