Word: soleri
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ranchers and other neighbors complained about the project in the early '70s, when some of Soleri's liberated female workers decided to toil away barebreasted, and "every trucker on Interstate 17 found some reason to stop at Arcosanti." Stories about drugs and skinny-dipping in nearby Lynx Lake upset the many religious fundamentalists in a state where billboards proclaim that "the wages of sin is death...
...Soleri's disciples are mainly white, middle class and college educated. Many come from what they call "a small California college," which often turns out to be Stanford. Though they take communal meals and share a withering scorn for "obvious suburbanites," these principled individuals are only quietly radical. "Arcosanti is based on solid middle-class values," says Scott Riley, 27, a former "small college" student. "We don't object to sitting around Sundays reading the New York Times, but we refuse to get caught up in working umpteen hours to pay for a nice...
Keeping both the dreams and the drudgery going is the extraordinary task, and achievement, of Soleri. Though Soleri seems simple and humble, Arcosanti's "workshoppers," as his volunteers call themselves, regard him as a genius, evidently because of his preoccupation with things spiritual. When he first came to the U.S. from Turin 33 years ago, he was regarded as a builder with panache and promise. But he has had few commissions in three decades. "I have not been properly used," he insists. One Arcosanti worker says that Soleri is the only architect around today better known for what...
...like Providence, Soleri works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. He operates within a paltry budget of $250,000 a year, most of which comes from his books and lectures, the sale of bells made on the site, and the $300 fees paid by those who come to toil on the project for a five-week workshop period. Those who stay longer get put on the payroll at $35 a week; and a few "Frank Lloyd Wright Scholars" attend free in exchange for manning the kitchens, a reminder of Soleri's own apprenticeship at Wright's Taliesin...
Arcosanti receives periodic pummelings from discontented workshoppers and journalists. Soleri and his group shrug them off. Their commitment to the future certainly seems sincere. They are people who want to be part of something big and good and natural. Each year they cele brate the solstices and the equinoxes with all the abandon of 18th century English villagers gamboling round the Maypole on May Day. It was during one of these festivals that a cast-aluminum figure of Icarus was hung from the top of a 34-ft. vault, where it remained for many months. The symbolism was perhaps unintended...