Counterculture hero, Paolo Soleri, Dies at 93.

Posted on: May 21st, 2013  |  No Comments

I have been a fan of Paolo Soleri and his architecture since I was a teenager. I have visited his settlement in the high Arizona desert, Arcosanti and recommend a visit by all visionaries who may read this blog.
Steven Kupferberg

Paolo Soleri, a visionary architect whose basic idea was that architecture and ecology are inseparable in their effect on people, died on April 9, 2013 at Cosanti, his home in Paradise Valley, Arizona. He was 93. He was best known as the designer and oracle of Arcosanti, a settlement in the Arizona high desert that became a symbol of hippie-era utopianism and a prescient environmentalism.

He was part of a flock of utopian dreamers who designed mega-structure cities in the 1960s, but he had more of a social and ecological agenda than the others. When so many others were theorizing, Soleri went out into the desert and actually built his vision with his own hands. That’s the reason he became such a counterculture hero.

Jeffrey Cook, a professor of architecture at Arizona State University

via The New York Times, Fred A Bernstein

A version of this obituary appeared in print on Wednesday, April 10, 2013, on page B13 of The New York Times with the headline: Paolo Soleri, 93, Architect Of Counterculture, Dies.

Comments are closed.