The following is the obituary of Paolo Soleri, a brilliant human being and futurist who lived and worked in Paradise Valley, Arizona. He died four years ago but his life and achievements will live forever. When I went to school at the University of Arizona in Tuscon, several fraternity brothers were into architecture and encouraged me to travel to the Phoenix area to see this unusual Italian architect.
His studio and teaching areas were a series of pods spread across the desert and his designs for a future civilization were stunning. I can remember the passion this man had for preparing for the future of mankind and his determination to establish a model in the Arizona High Desert.
A few years later my parents moved to Paradise Valley and every time I went to visit I went to the Paolo Soleri studio and was amazed at the many, many architectural students from around the world who journeyed to work with his on his amazing concepts.
To help raise money for his unique institute he also made the most complex and magical bells I ever saw and collecting the Soleri bells became a passion. Mostly just watching the master at work was sheer fun as his relationship with students, his extraordinary designs, and his adaption to his adopted desert were a source of delight and inspiration.
Everyone should get a chance to experience the Soleri studio and his model of the cities of the future out in the desert, it will give you hope for mankind. Soleri was one of a kind, and he influenced thousands with his genius. Meeting him several times was one of the highlights of my life.
Arcosanti
IN MEMORIAM
REMEMBERING PAOLO SOLERI
June 21,1919 - April 9, 2013
Today the world has lost one
of its great minds. Paolo Soleri, architect, builder, artist, writer,
theorist, husband, father, born on Summer Solstice, has died at age 93.
Paolo Soleri spent a lifetime investigating how architecture, specifically the architecture of the city, could support the countless possibilities of human aspiration. The urban project he founded, Arcosanti, 65 miles north of Phoenix, was described by NEWSWEEK magazine as “…the most important urban experiment undertaken in our lifetimes.”
His own lifetime of work is represented in models, drawings, books, lectures and museum exhibits throughout the world. Soleri’s exhibition in 1970 at the
Paolo Soleri’s ideas are embodied on the ground in the flowing forms of his architectural workshop Cosanti in
Over the years Soleri’s architectural commissions have included the Dome House in Cave Creek, Arizona, the astonishing Artistica Ceramica Solimene ceramics factory in Vietri, Italy, the Indian Arts Cultural Center/ Theatre in Santa Fe, the Glendale Community College Theater, the University of Arizona College of Medicine chapel, the Scottsdale Pedestrian Bridge and Plaza; and his latest bas-relief murals part of the new I-17 Arcosanti/Cordes Junction Arizona traffic interchange. In an age of specialization Paolo Soleri showed architecture’s ability to influence and even lead the search for a new pattern of inhabiting the earth. The awards that resulted from this search included gold medals from the American Institute of Architects, the Union of International Architects, the Venice Biennale and the National Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt/Smithsonian Museum.
Soleri continued questioning and creating until his death. The theme of his last project, a series of collages entitled “Then and Now”, juxtaposed his own signature forms with illustrations of life from antiquity. In this project Paolo Soleri attempted to capture the critical notion that we are constantly building on the past, on the work of countless generations that have preceded us on the earth. Our own work - and Soleri’s work especially - put into this context, might be a seed that takes many more generations to mature and complete.
Paolo Soleri is survived by two daughters, Kristine Soleri Timm and Daniela Soleri, both of
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