In the Background – PAOL0 SOLERI: LETS RING THOSE BELLS

I promised you bells! 

 

For “In the Background ambience” please link here to Timeless productions –then scroll down slightly, to click on 1.“Harmony by Design.” Like aural magic The Bells of Arcosonti will sound. Then minimize that window, take a few deep breaths, and come back and let your self go – enjoy this memorial  and the life work of a visionary man . . . Paolo Soleri.

 

“In the Background. . . lets turn the tables. Take a picture of yourself or someone else as a shadow, a reflection, or a lesser part of a scene . . .”

 

I cast my reflection . . .

Paolo, is written across the mirror. Soleri wind chimes are in the fore.

 

 

 

    Dr. Paolo Soleri, architect, ecologist, builder, theorist, died recently on April 9, 2013, at an age of 93 years.

 

 

His ideas generated a lean and frugal methodology for approaching life on earth, similar to 20^th century visionaries Buckminster Fuller and E.F. Schumacher.

 

 

 

 

Cosanti was the the residence and sculpture studio of Soleri and his staff, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

 

An Arcosonti artist forges a brass wind bells to help create income for the Cosanti foundation.

 

 

The merging of architecture with ecology

was a concept Paolo named Arcology.

 

Paola Soleri was one of the last surviving apprentices of the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, but in the late 1940’s Soleri broke fellowship with him over Wrights concept of The Broadacre City.

 

Soleri favoured a compact and more densely populated self sustaining city.

“Paolo Soleri’s sustainable theories were decades ahead of their time and yet largely overlooked during an era when urban sprawl defined the American Dream,” wrote Snowden Bishop of the Arizona Green Magazine.

 

Phoenix, Arizona – USA

In 2011 Soleri commented that “the gigantism of the car landscape and the consequent urban sprawl are the main obstacles to sustainability. The Choice is between the hermitages of urban sprawl and the leanness of the city self containment – a reformulation of the American Dream that is a reformation of culture away from materialism.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arcosonti is an experimental eco-town located 60 miles north of Phoenix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paolo contended that “we have become hyper consumers possessed by materialism,” and the automobile culture “has segregated our communities, wasted our resources and moved us away from the glory of culture, which should be appreciated as a great miracle.”

 

 

Todays city planners scramble to revitalize urban cores using green building practices similar to Soleri’s evaporative cooling and solar techniques.

 

 

Soleri was strongly influenced by the philosophy of Jesuit Palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who once wrote that “our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation”.

 

Here is an excerpt from the UK’s The Guardian, by Oliver Wainwright –

Paolo Soleri Obituary

 

“If you are truly concerned about the problems of pollution, waste, energy depletion, land, water, air and biological conservation, poverty, segregation, intolerance, population containment, fear and disillusionment,” reads the sign at the entrance to Arcosanti, “join us.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beyond the placard lies the proposed solution to this list of ills:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                       Google image

 

An otherworldly landscape of concrete domes and soaring vaults rising out of the Arizona desert, like a cross between an ancient Mayan ruin complex and the Star Wars cities of Tatooine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the experimental eco-town of Arcosanti;

 

The lifetime’s work of the visionary Italian-born architect Paolo Soleri . . .

 

                                                                                                                                                                          Google image

who has died aged 93.

Rest in peace . . .

 

and let us

ring those bells!

 

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” Teilhard de Chardin

Note – the Woww wind series will return next week – sorry for the delay . . .  Bruce.

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Tags: anti materialism, Arcosonti, Paolo Soleri, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, postaday, Soleri wind bells, sustainable design, wind chimes

• May 29, 2013
• appropriate technology, Architecture, art, BUILDING, CLIMATE CHANGE, Creativity +, Music, People, Politics, Sustainability.....
• 13 Comments