I found these beautiful pieces quite by surprise.
While on a road trip out west…my dear husband wanted to make a stop to see Arcosanti.
ARCOSANTI?
Now, I had never heard of Arcosanti before and I was not that interested in heading out into the country on a dirt road to see this place. My husband, being an architect had heard about this place and while driving along the highway in Arizona, lo and behold, a highway sign that said…
“ARCOSANTI…THAT WAY!”
He immediately turned our car around and off we went! While driving there, he told me about this place.
I’m thinking this place SOUNDS a bit strange
Mr. Notes was excited to see this place and I pretended to be interested.
(After all, I love antique stops!)
Well, he explained that it was a planned community with observation towers, sweeping concrete vaults and dwellings clustered along the steep basalt cliffs of the Agua Fria River and it had treasures for sale!
Got me right then. A store???
Oh sure, let’s head down the dusty and it seemed to me, not well traveled road.
Well, in my mind, ekkk was setting in. Well, to my surprise we drove up to a very ultramodern compound rising above a desert canyon: A city upon a hill.
I’m getting a bit more excited. Okay, we were about to see what Paolo Soleri, the city’s visionary designer, had in store for us!
Mind-boggling
Unique
Fascinating
Peculiar, yet amazing.
My interest was right away into what I was going to purchase!
Below is a great article about the unique city on the hill-
Deep in the Desert, No Longer Far Out
By ALASTAIR GORDON
Published: July 26, 2001
IF tie-dye T-shirts and Volkswagen Bugs are back, Paolo Soleri can't be far behind. For those who remember him as a Woodstock-era guru of alternative architecture, Dr. Soleri conjures images of trust-fund hippies trekking to Arizona to cast bronze bells in his foundries or to pour the concrete walls of Arcosanti, his hivelike community 65 miles north of Phoenix.
For most of his 60-year career, Dr. Soleri, 82, has been perceived as a cult figure on architecture's freaky fringe. But what was once dismissed as counterculture dreams seems to be up for reappraisal. ''Until the late 80's most people thought we were just a bunch of odd people out in the desert,'' Dr. Soleri said during a New York stopover last month. ''We have been talking about a 'lean alternative' in this opulent society, and more people seem to be responding.'' In 1970, Dr. Soleri began building Arcosanti, a planned community with observation towers, sweeping concrete vaults and dwellings clustered along the steep basalt cliffs of the Agua Fria River. Dr. Soleri conceived it as a prototype that would show how other cities might minimize energy use and motor transportation while encouraging human interaction. By concentrating inhabitants in a sequence of partly submerged multilevel structures, he sought to preserve the wildness of the surrounding desert landscape. Greenhouses provide gardening space and tap warm air for heating. ''Our mission at Arcosanti has been to bring the city up to date, socially and culturally,'' Dr. Soleri said, ''to create an antidote to sprawl.'' Just read this, Paolo Soleri, a visionary architect who was best known as the designer and oracle of Arcosanti, a settlement in the Arizona high desert that became a symbol of hippie-era utopianism and a prescient environmentalism, died on Tuesday at Cosanti, his home in Paradise Valley, Ariz. He was 93.
Article in New York Times Hope you enjoyed a little bit about Arcosanti~
