Why Arcosanti Doesn't Work

(Written two days before the post date:)

It is my last night at Arcosanti before I leave it for the east coast, and to a new potential in the future.

I feel some responsibility to share my thoughts now—that's what blogging is, of course. I had originally started this blog as a cataloguing of my experiences at Arcosanti—the place that almost had a childhood memory quality about it. In a way, coming here was a way to reclaim my identity after a hiatus from school, during which I felt like I had lost personal direction.

But every step in the journey is just that—a step. To describe what each step is—where it comes from, and then where it leads, and why you have to move on—is important. The obvious question now would be: "you've been at Arcosanti for seven months. What do you think? Do you still like it there? What are your thoughts on it?"

The fact is that my answer would not be that politic.

Blogs are a strange medium, as a form of publication. They can be legitimately good material, or they can descend into punditry or, at worst, gossip. But the core of the blog is its personal perspective—to write a good blog is to give a good, just, and honest opinion through one's own eyes. I've always tried to be careful with the way I blog—I don't mention people, or rarely do, and if I do it's in passing. I blog about subjects and events, thoughts and ideas that I personally have. Not the actions of others.

The odd thing is that Arcosanti is determined, and made, by the actions of others. To comment on its future and "what I think of it" is almost to comment on the people that live there. Especially in the context of my answer to the question.

Yet as a blogger—and hopefully a good one—and as a good person, and as a person who does, in fact, care about the future of this project and feels (and is) deeply indebted to Paolo Soleri, I have to answer, and answer honestly. I will try to do this, while only commenting on the general direction of the Arcosanti Project as it is today, made as a summation of the people that make it work from the inside. It is not a comment on any single one person. It is a comment on the summation of all of it put together—“Arcosanti” as a project, as a work-in-progress, faceless and total. Thus any acclaim can be shared with the blame.

Arcosanti has one single flaw, in my opinion, that makes it the emaciated the project that it is. It is complacency.

The difference between the Master Plan for Arcosanti and its reality is apparent to any tourist or visitor. Its concrete presence is dwarfed a hundred times by the vision that created it and should, literally, overshadow it. The common complaints are a lack of funding, a lack of human resources and power. And these are true obstacles that keep Arcosanti from fulfilling the larger vision of the grand "Laboratory" that Paolo envisioned.

The irony though is that the place sprung up despite a lack of funding. Despite a lack of human resources. Paolo was keen enough to know and believe that if he "built it, they would come." And they did. Workshoppers came to Arcosanti by the hundred in the seventies. People believed they were part of something unique and cutting edge—and they were. Arcosanti was the “most important project in urban architecture in our lifetime,” or something to that extent—that was what Newsweek said of it when it had first started to draw attention.

Now however, Arcosanti wows tourists, visitors, and architects (and them only for a short while) not because it is cutting edge. Not any more. It is the sheer fact that it is different—different from the normal day-to-day in Phoenix or Washington DC, that makes it worth the drive. This is neither good or bad. It's a lukewarm "different" that is not indicative of an alternative that should be embraced—it is simply… different. Different in the way that you would treat an estranged trinket—an heirloom from a distant country. It is novel, yet irrelevant. It is certainly not innovative, not in its contemporary intention. Paolo Soleri is innovative by immeasurable stretches, even into his 90’s. His project, which is the property of the Cosanti Foundation, is not. And there is a reason why.

I came to Arcosanti with my eyes wide open. Wide, wide open. My experience in human communities based around a single vision (i.e. churches) prepared me for the myopia that often besieges those communities after their period of being revolutionary—after the vision has grown stale, and after the invigorating question of “What if” (Paolo Soleri’s question) is replaced by “This is”.

It's biggest flaw is complacency. Complacency with what it is—the built structures as they are. Arcosanti, as it is lived in and lived by the people inside, is a project that is simply not concerned with innovation—as ironic or wrong as that may seem. It falls back on the original vision that Paolo created for it, and this vision is maintained by the Foundation—but in the way that a museum keeper dusts and mops around an unchanging sculpture. Paolo's vision kept changing—from space arcologies to lean linear cities. He’s at 90, and is ready to publish a new book. Most people don’t live to that age, much less write a book then. There was no way for Arcosanti to keep up with him from the start. But the great sin of it, in my opinion, and the reason why it exudes the air of a tangential, emaciated project in the desert, is because it does not want to keep up with him, nor does it try to.

Complacency. It is the the caked layer of memory—that something was tried in '81 didn’t work, and thus we shouldn't do it again. Complacency with the way things function (or don't), because they've been that way for so long. It's not that new ideas aren't accepted. It's that they never stick when they are accepted. Businesses can set up shop. I could move in as an artist, say, or start a telecommunications business if I finagled enough and put up with the politics for long enough. But as a person who has worked and lived here for an extended period of time (relatively speaking), participated in a good number of the social and pseudo-political functions and bodies that make up the place, I never truly felt that my presence, as an innovative, young mind, was ever welcomed. It was, definitely, by Paolo Soleri—even in his old age, he beckoned me to sit closer to him at School of Thought sessions, and smiled when I asked what his definition of sacred space was. But Arcosanti, as a place, as an institution, as a project, does not know what to do with my presence as a young, innovative mind—and even if it did, it would not have the staying power or resources to utilize it. What more, it is not concerned with older, wiser minds that could bring a true academic, institutional presence to Arcosanti and the Foundation. Academies and institutions are the tools and playthings of innovators and visionaries, but for the contrarian generation of the 60’s and 70’s, they’re the enemies of the environment and all that is good. They are the establishment—the thing to fight against. These very minds have been either ignored or, when they’ve gotten too close, outright shunned. These are the kinds of personalities and minds that make green energy conferences—the kinds that are on the forefront of architecture and design—the kinds that have the funding and backing to actually create a megastructure in the desert.

The reason why they are shunned, and why twenty-somethings like me are half-heartedly embraced, is because innovation requires sacrifice. It requires continually calling into question the normal modes and methods by which you operate. It is not simply thinking outside the concrete box. It is not simply willing to "try anything" to get the funding you need. It requires actually putting Arcosanti as it is, as it was, and as it should be, on the table as something to be questioned and prodded into new life. (Note: in Paolo's philosophy the future doesn't exit, and as such "should" really doesn't make any sense, as an imperative order for a nonexistent context. Paolo’s vision is not a mandate, a “should” for Arcosanti—not anymore.) Arcosanti can not, and will not ever be anything but Paolo Soleri's odd experiment in the desert north of Phoenix, and it will not be anything else because it was unable—and now, is simply unwilling—to imagine itself as anything else. The caked layers of memory weighs too heavy for it to reinvent itself from the inside out.

But what's responsible for this milieu? I've often cited in conversations the transient nature of the community—a first, deep-set layer of veterans who have been here for three years to fifteen years, or more. Then a second ever-changing layer of workshoppers, young professionals, and volunteers, like myself, that don't last more than a year. I used to fault this teflon-like quality to an insufficient gravity of the community—it wasn't enough of a city or town to retain its incoming population. Then I began to think that it wasn't due to that, because people do sometimes stay—it was instead due to a kind of constipation of the mind. The vision of Paolo Soleri was so huge, so specific, and so brilliant, I thought, that Arcosanti was too enthralled with it to pursue any other alternate Arcosant. A potential artist complex Arcosanti. An organic farming operation Arcosanti. A performing artist studio space Arcosanti. A brewery and bakery Arcosanti. All of these were great ideas, some of which had been tried with varying success. My theory was that the cold shoulder I received—a very subtle mood, over the course of many months, and only in certain situations specific, profound, and sharp—was due to a xenophobia of anything not-Paolo. It is controlled so specifically, my theory went, that it wouldn't accept any new or outside ideas unless it came from an alum.

My theory now is that the Foundation is tired. It's tried for so long, and nothing seems to have worked to make the project something more. It still cares—but not in the fiery way the young architects from Italy do when they come here. It is a passive caring—the way one cares for their favorite couch and would rather not see anything spilled on it by a new guest, as friendly and enthusiastic as they are. The Foundation is not some outside organism that watches Arcosanti progress beneath its feet—the Foundation is Arcosanti. It's the people who manage and run the place. And they've been here for so long, having seen so many twenty-somethings go by, that they've become introverted. They are not an intellectual centerpiece. They don’t have the faculty (personnel or or skillwise), nor the will for it—they certainly have the connections for it, but they don’t utilize those connections. When outside academics get too close, then they are turned away. Arcosanti would rather not see this kind of involvement, because it means changing the living and working situation of the inhabitants. This is why the Foundation is not able to consult with cities on future urban planning, even if they were asked. It is not a research institution—it is a caretaking and maintenance institution. They have nothing to say at a conference on green energy. Not anything more than "the car is bad, and so is air conditioning—use passive solar architecture instead.” Even when Drexel University came with a group of bright, forward-thinking grad students who had renovated sections of Philadelphia with green roofs and sustainable water systems—when they came to Arcosanti, they were so enthralled with the project that they wanted to outright give the Foundation a plan for a sustainable water system. When asked what Arcosanti would want for such a water system at the critical population of 500 people, the residents could only say “we don’t know.” And that’s as far as the conversation ever really got. Such conversations are an exercise in frustration rather than a dreaming session in the world of optimistic possibility and Paolo’s grand thesis, “What if?”.

The only word I can come up with for it is complacency. They don’t have the stomach, the will, or the mind for anything else. Companies like Apple, BMW, etc. are successful and are always at the forefront because they are never satisfied. They hunger for something more. Thus they innovate, and innovation becomes their defining feature. They reinvent themselves to survive and to be a model. This is why Paolo Soleri became famous in the first place—he rethought the incubator for civilization, the city, from the foundations up.

This is too risky a plan for Arcosanti. It retreats, instead, into an introverted world of "done it before, do it again." If the Foundation keeps it as its company town, which is what it actually is, then ten years from now, Arcosanti will not look any different. It will not have its master greenhouse, it will not have the West Crescent. And it’s because the people here wouldn't know what to do if a sushi restaurant wanted to set up shop in their new steel-and-glass apse, the West Crescent. They would get scared and vote them out at a leadership meeting, or prolong the conversation until the restaurant stopped caring. That is the social reality that stifles the project. It is something between longing to only put as much effort in as you had before, because you've already dedicated your life to the project (what more could you ask of someone?), and a sort of fear how it might change your home when it gets that new 5000 addition. They're already the guinea pigs in the laboratory, and they've already built the concrete ceilings. They've made their homes in the silt—but who knows if they'd actually like to live in one of Paolo Soleri's cities.

The fact is that it's not his project anymore. He is just the guiding sage, where a no actually means no (voting is not possible in such a situation—a rare occasion). It is the Foundation's project. But the Foundation is not an innovative organization—it is a group of people that built a place with their bare hands, and now want to live in it. That is as far as Arcosanti’s ambition goes. It is tired—known to the world, but lethargic.

I'm convinced now that this is why the place has not grown. It is not a political excuse such as funding, or lack of resources. These are actually symptoms of the problem—not the problem itself. It is actually because Arcosanti doesn't want a different kind of future than what is already built—the one particular to it. People love Arcosanti for what it is, not what it could be. The disfunction is unknown to the people who live here—it's simply a fact of life. And they’re so familiar with it, that they'd rather it not change.

Unfortunately, this leaves no space for people who are passionate about the "possibility" of the project. This word, in the ears of the Foundation, only cocks eyebrows. Possibility is a byway, not the forefront—it’s just another grad student with aspirations. They can start a greenhouse if they want to—as long as it doesn't interfere with the way things are done now.

Someone asked me yesterday what I won't miss about Arcosanti—contrary to the usual sentimental question of what I will miss. Complacency, in short order, was my answer—the fact that I have to try twice as hard to innovate here as I would anywhere else. To convince them that they actually need a certain thing, and that it will help them move forward—and then go ahead and do it. If Arcosanti is to be anything other than what it already is, it means that the Foundation will either have to whither away, likes its project gradually is, or the two will have to be outright divorced.

For now, that's not happening. And that's why Arcosanti is what it is—and nothing else.