arcosanti

"The care of the citizen is the sap of the city. But one can care only for that which one loves. A lovable city is key to a living city. A lovely city is not an accident, as a lovely person is not an accident."                                       —Paolo Soleri

Several years ago, when I attended a photography camp at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, is when I first discovered the simple elegance of building a living space that was peacefully integrated with the natural environment on which it was constructed. My admiration and appreciation for innovative and aesthetically beautiful architecture was restored after taking a short road trip to visit Arcosanti: 20th century architect Paolo Soleri's vision of a harmonious and sustainable community. His philosophy of 'Arcology', the combination of architecture and ecology, led him to plan and begin construction for a city that would embody this very idea. Before visiting Arcosanti, I only knew of the name Soleri from his creation of bronze and ceramic wind bells, one of which has hung in my backyard for multiple years now. Our bronze bell rings most furiously each July evening as the desert monsoon winds blow in, coloring the sky with pink dust. After seeing how these bells are made at Arcosanti, the chimes that can be heard even from my tightly-closed bedroom window mean just a bit more to me. Though the entirety of Arcosanti was never fully completed, what lies in the central Arizonan desert today is a perfect example of what the future of our cities must begin to implement if we are to keep the nature that surrounds us available for every subsequent generation to experience for themselves.

"In nature, as an organism evolves it increases in complexity and it also becomes a more compact or miniaturized system. Similarly a city should function as a living system. Arcology, architecture and ecology as one integral process, is capable of demonstrating positive response to the many problems of urban civilization, population, pollution, energy and natural resource depletion, food scarcity and quality of life. Arcology recognizes the necessity of the radical reorganization of the sprawling urban landscape into dense, integrated, three-dimensional cities in order to support the complex activities that sustain human culture. The city is the necessary instrument for the evolution of humankind."                                       —Paolo Soleri

concerning plants - a visit to the Desert Botanical Garden

There's only about a handful of places that I visited over winter break that can be considered to be slightly exciting and/or interesting; the Desert Botanical Garden is among these few. I decided spend my time browsing the garden's beautiful selection of trees, flowers, succulents, and cacti, rather than my usual option: sleeping in until 12 pm and then proceeding to binge watch Downton Abbey, equipped with a pot of pasta, for the rest of the day. I had been wanting to visit the botanical garden for a while now, and the cool(ish) weather that arrived with December left me with minimal excuses to slack off and miss my chance to pay homage to the plants until next year. The botanical garden itself included different areas where various types of plants were located, including an an herb garden, flower garden, and cactus & succulent galleries. At the time when I visited, the garden had also integrated some of the work of glass sculptor, Chihuly, among the plants in an exhibit called "Chihuly in The Garden". The glass sculptures scattered throughout the place definitely added some more visual interest in my opinion, probably because I was already familiar with many of the plants there, being a native of Arizona. There was also a cafe, which, as expected, was pretty over-priced (Luckily, my sister, who accompanied me, paid for lunch). But overall, the garden did not disappoint. I only wish I had remembered to bring along my sketchbook so that I would have had the opportunity to scribble out a few drawings of some of the foliage just for the fun of it.