Arcology: The City in the Image of Man - Softcover

Soleri, Paolo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262690411 ISBN 13: 9780262690416

Publisher: Mit Pr, 1973

Synopsis

This edition contains all the text and illustrations found in the giant Arcology, photographically reduced somewhat to allow a lower price and enhanced handleability.

"In the three-dimensional city, man defines a human ecology. In it he is a country dweller and metropolitan man in one. By it the inner and the outer are at 'skin' distance. He has made the city in his own image. Arcology: the city in the image of man."
—Paolo Soleri

About this title

About the Author:

Paolo Soleri was born in Torino, Italy, in 1921. He moved to Arizona after WW II to study with Frank Lloyd Wright. He started his owsn Cosanti Foundation in the 1950s, and engaged into the monumental Arcosanti project, a prototype city in the northern Arizona desert. His vision, his writings, his worldwide recognition earned him the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2000 - the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for the Arts. Paolo Soleri lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Review:

"...his philosophical and environmental perceptions offer a sudden, stunning pertinence for today. He does not need the current bandwagon of despair. He has been preaching environment and ecology for a long time. But his ecology deals with both the natural and man-made world, in a very special mutual relationship. By his definition, architecture and ecology are two parts of the same thing, inseparable in their effect on man. He calls it 'arcology.'"
—Ada Louise Huxtable, New York Times

"Essentially, there are three points that set Soleri apart from all other utopian planners groping for the next development in man. His arcologies are new communities, totally unrelated to the old urban centers—not plug-in renewals but revolutionary prototypes for a total break with existing planning patterns or theories.

"Secondly, Soleri postulates the supremacy of esthetics over structure and technology....

"And thirdly, Soleri bases his entire arcology neither on economic, social or industrial considerations but on a philosophical system. It is so all-embracing in its scope that it relates the arcological city units to the entire evolution of organic life, from the proto-biological Urschleim (primordial ooze) to an as yet unresolved Neo-Matter. This extremely ramified Biological Humanism, touching on every aspect of human existence, defies summation...."
—Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Architectural Forum

About this edition

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 0262690411
• ISBN 13: 9780262690416
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256