Soleri, Paolo, << soh LEH ree, PAH oh loh >> (1919-2013), was an Italian-born architect and urban planner. He became famous for his theories of preserving the environment. Soleri believed that, to protect nature’s resources, cities should be built on as little land as possible.
According to Soleri, an urban center should be a single structure surrounded by open land used for agriculture and recreation. He called such a city an arcology, a term formed by combining parts of the words architecture and ecology. In 1970, Soleri began to build his first experimental city, called Arcosanti, near Prescott, Arizona. He designed Arcosanti for a population of 5,000.
Soleri also proposed designs for other urban environments. As in Arcosanti, all housing, business, and industrial facilities would be located within a single gigantic structure. Such cities would use shuttle systems and moving walkways instead of automobiles. Nuclear and solar power would provide energy. Soleri’s designs for these cities indicated his concern for pure geometric forms and his faith in technology and machines.
Soleri was born on June 21, 1919, in Turin, Italy. He came to the United States in 1947 to study with architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1956, Soleri settled in Arizona, where he built structures half hidden in the earth. He built some structures by forming the earth into a desired shape, pouring concrete over it, and then removing the earth to expose the interior space. Soleri died on April 9, 2013.
