Abstract

Atop a low mesa above the Aqua Fria river in central Arizona, a unique laboratory devoted to testing a new ecological model has been slowly developing for twenty-five years. A project of Paolo Soleri's Cosanti Foundation, Arcosanti is a working prototype for a new kind of city — one being designed, built, and inhabited as a three-dimensional, highly concentrated megastructure. To house a city of 5,000 to 6,000 people, Arcosanti will occupy only fourteen acres of land in the midst of an 860 acre greenbelt/park area/agricultural zone. The closely articulated structures of Arcosanti will be not much more than one-quarter of a mile on any one side, but they will rise to as much as twenty-five stories tall.