This article is written by author M. Christian (from "Meine kleine fabrik"). M. Christian loves to write about the odd, weird, and wonderful things hidden all around us.
Architecture on a dramatic scale... Cities the size of mountains.
Whatever happened to the future? It's still around, of course, mostly in Europe and Japan, but over the years the Fantastic World of Tomorrow's gotten ... cheaper, simpler, and -- most tragically of all -- the future's gotten too damned small.
Luckily there are a few visionaries left who aren't frightened of a future that doesn't fit in your pocket, a tomorrow with a vast scope, a monstrously dramatic scale, a time of awe-inspiring dimensions: they've dared to look over the horizon and visualize a truly big tomorrow.
(Example of a dramatic scale - "Continuous Monument" concept, by Superstudio)
One of those more special of special minds, someone who's imagined a future world that’s big on almost a geologic scale, is Paolo Soleri. (All images are copyright and by permission of Paolo Soleri, Cosanti Foundation)
(on the right - self-made caricature portrait)
Born in Italy in 1919, Soleri studied with Frank Lloyd Wright (you might have heard of him) before setting up his own architecture studio in Arizona. It was in Scottsdale that Soleri began to dream big.
Very, very, very big.
Soleri created the concept of an "arcology," a combo of architecture and ecology. The idea is pretty uncomplicated, though what Soleri did with his concept is wonderfully elaborate: cities have traditionally been urban slime mold, grinding away at the planet as they’ve crawled across the landscape. So why not create cities with as many people as possible in a small as possible footprint? And not only that but why not also make these super cities magnificently, tremendously, elegantly … beautiful?
One of my treasured belongings as a kid was a copy of Soleri’s Arcology: The City in the Image of Man. I would spend hours carefully turning page after page, mesmerized by Soleri’s majestic future, imagining myself strolling under immense vaults, along astounding spans, gazing up at soaring rises, down into artificial canyons of homes, stores, schools, businesses, living in a city the size of … well, big.
Really, really friggin’ big.
Just look at his design for Babel (IID, if you want to be specific): an immense flared cylinder of apartments sitting in a saucer-shaped base of commercial and civil spaces, with some parks, of course. Total population? 550,000. That’s Seattle. That’s Portland. All in one structure -- a structure that’s 1,900 meters high and 3,000 meters at its widest.
That’s more than a mile high and almost two miles wide. Want even more perspective? If you look at one of Soleri’s fantastic plans you’ll often see a strange little symbol to one side, an icon to give you an idea of the scale of his designs: an icon that represents the Empire State Building.
Then there’s Hexadredon, an incredible geometric mountain rising on three immense supports. Home to more than 170,000, it would rise half a mile into the sky and stretch about that same distance across the landscape. Like all of Soleri’s designs, it looks more like a cathedral carved from a mountain than what you might envision for a single vast building; as much art as architecture, as much sculpture as a structure for living.
Put people into cities - to free up the rest of the world for nature
Soleri’s designs are not limited to the dull flatness of the plains. Some of them, like the poetic Stonebow that bridges a canyon with its 200,000 population, the dam city of Arcodiga, or Arcbeam whose mere 65,000 inhabitants live on the side of a cliff, show his amazing ability to visualize a future not only of incredible size but also to work with any location.
Even the ocean: Novanoah’s 400,000 people live, work, and play in a city floating at sea. Even space: Asteromo’s 70,000 people live, work, and play in near-earth orbit.
"3-D Jersey was the winning entry in a 1968 competition to design a new supersonic airport for the Jersey Meadows. There are a few runways and terminals around the base of the structure, but the main feature of the design is the city of one million rising 300 stories around a cybernetic core."
You can buy Paolo Soleri's book (in an appropriately huge format) at this link. You can also order "Hyper Building" poster at Arcosanti site.
Arcosanti Takes Shape
But what’s even more amazing than Soleri’s designs and grander-than-grand visions is that out in the cactus and scorpion wilds of Arizona he and his students are building one: Arcosanti:
Originally planned to house a grander number, the new target for this test-bed Arcology is about 5,000 residents, mostly students and artists. Right now it’s home to only about 120 -- with roughly 50,000 tourists stopping by every year to see how things are going. (there was even a movie filmed there: "Nightfall" based on famous science fiction story by Isaac Asimov)
Sure Arcosanti might be a tad on the small side, and, yes, it’s not exactly been blossoming into reality at a rapid pace, but it’s there nonetheless: a beautifully arched and vaulted beginning to what could be a staggeringly beautiful, and breathtakingly immense, future.
Say what you want about the realism of Soleri’s visions but you have to always give him and his student this: in a world where the future is small and cheap they are looking toward tomorrow with big dreams: big, hopeful, dreams.
UPDATE: Some other mega-city projects that came to our attention:
"Sea-City", 1968 - architect Hal Moggridge for Pilkington Glass Company:
Japan's Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid:
Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid is so big that it can not be built unless stronger materials are invented (capable to hold the weight of enormous structure) It's proposed to be more than 2 kilometers high, with housing for 750,000 people. More info.
I can't imagine who would want to live in a place like that. You would never own your bit, only rent it, and you couldn't do anything serious to personalize it. Talk about the Neighborhood Association from Hell. Of course, I wouldn't mind if large numbers of other people went to live in one and left the real land open for people who appreciate it.
I highly recommend anyone interested in it to do check out arcosanti if they find themselves north of phoenix.
Sure, the project has mostly stalled in a larger sense, but is still self supporting. One thing the pics don't capture is the experience of being in those buildings, very unique, and very refreshing in a sense. It was early summer when I visited, very hot out, and yet quite cool and comfortable inside, without any AC on. The internal distribution of thermal energy and movement of air felt much more fresh and alive than the artificial cold tomb-like experience of most of Phoenix's large buildings that time of year.
Aesthetics aside, Soleri has a gift for creating true living spaces.
Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket... Having an entire city in one structure leaves the entire population very vulnerable to a variety of disasters: fire, epidemic, power failures, enemy or terrorist attack, etc., not to mention the attendant problems of utilities, waste disposal, emergency evacuation, and maintenance. Some ideas look a lot better on paper than in reality.
They aren't such a clever idea, 1 million people crammed in, what if a bomb goes off in a very important place, you could have up to 1 million casualties!
I've always thought that Solari's megacities were to some extant a reactin to Frank Loyd Wright's Broadacre City; a vison of continent ecompassing sprawl. PT: actually his vision was a bit more heterogenous. The exteriors aren't very uniform because building really only provides a concrete slab and basic infrastructure. Everything else would be built by the individual "condo-owner."
These are all grand ideas that lead to something bigger. While the concerns raised by the commenters here are all valid, these represent the first step in being able to colonize other worlds once they are determined to be able to sustain life, or we have developed the capacity to make other worlds sustain life.
Arcologies like this provide us with an opportunity, built on Earth, to discover the flaws, problems, logistical hurdles and potentials for disaster that exist in the designs prior to building them in space and sending them, fully loaded, to another world, or building them on that world. If they can be made stable in an environment that is already relatively stable, they have passed the first step towards being able to support human life elsewhere in the universe. It is only a few more baby steps to design them in such a way as to be able to survive elsewhere and/or travel there under their own power and land safely.
To those who dismissed the idea's based on fear filled sentiments, I am profoundly sorry. A bomb can cause 1 million casualties due to the close proximity of the living quarters? Damn, all it takes is a bigger bomb, which you know each country is always developing and the benefits of being spread out are lost, and the cons are all thats left. Destruction of natural ecosystems around the entire world have been destroyed based on people wanting to own "their" piece. At least with arcologys nature has a better chance of surviving. And humans still just have human problems, like thinking you need more than you have. Americans wake up to the world your part of please.
Another cult complete with a saintly founder who enjoys his own opulent private quarters (with desert swimming pool) while his acolytes do all the drudgery trying to get his unwieldy designs to work.
He nowadays passes his time making styrofoam models for the trademark wind chimes. Incidentally, his eco-friendly minions directly invest molten metal into the styrofoam sending gouts of poisonous black hydrocarbons into the otherwise pristine high-desert skies.
"Thinking globally but acting locally." What a crock!
Mainly someone said this seems like putting all your eggs in one basket - well think about it this way: Earth = One Basket. We need to spread out and this is a logical primer.
Next to the guy who said leave land to the people who appreciate it. The point of this is to give everyone the opportunity to appreciate land not divide it up and fence it off and 'customize' it.
There will never be enough land to go around and some of the best land is taken by people who assume they have a right to keep it from everyone else.
There's a candidate for the Darwin Award in the first picture of the wheelbarrow BBQ!
First, the heat of the fire will most likely cause the wood frame to start smoldering or burst into flames. Second, the wheelbarrow is not stable and is likely to tip over. But the worst offense is the uncapped gas can in the background...
The clip belongs to the film Animals are beautiful people, from the same director of TGMBC. It's a great film, but it's been known for a while that this scene and several others were actually staged and/or manipulated for dramatic effect.
The American Eagle is the remains of an F-104 Starfighter fuselage, an aircraft which was also powered by a J-79. What? No-one is impressed by a fact a brief google search would have revealed? Fine, be glad we're living in the future, rather than in the book-laden, internet-free past.
Thank you for publishing my pic and linking to my photo blog.
But you got a couple of things wrong. The village is called "Planina v Lazu" and the mountain on the right looking down on it is "Slatna". The picture was taken from "Prvi Vogel" which is 2181m high.
Thanks again and be sure to check out more pics on my blog.
Aircraft carrier looks like its coming into port everglades, in Ft. Lauderdale. FL. They used to have the air and sea show every may and before/after the event the boats/subs/aircraft carries parked in Ft. Lauderdale Harbor...seriously cool
The squirrel drinking a Guinness gif is taken from a longer Guinness commercial called "Dream On", which may be found here: http://www.spike.com/video/guinness-dream-club/2444983
The weird arm-flapping guy on the third animated gif is Andre van Duin, a dutch commedian. This clip is from very early in his carreer. I think he is like 60 jears old now, while in the clip he must be in his early 20's.
Thank you! Some days I get so involved in my own silly problems; in the little life I'm living (and feel is just SO important!) that I forget what an amazing, beautiful world with which God has blessed me. Thanks for the reminder to look around...
The pictures from holland aren't actually spiderwebs, but rather a protective covering created by caterpillars. They can cover entire trees and bushes in a dense white webbing to protect themselves from predators.
Camel spiders are so named because they can jump to the height of a camel's belly, and draw blood from them directly. That is scary, I don't care who you are.
Gorgeous photos! Spiders absolutely fascinate me. My avatar is actually a picture I took of a Golden Orb Weaver on her web in our backyard. Orb webs are the prettiest, but also pretty are the sheetlike webs that the Funnel Spider makes. We currently have a Funnel Spider living near the frontdoor of our house that is starting to build a sheet, and it's slowly getting bigger. We won't be taking it down anytime soon. Our house is a spider-friendly area. :P Two years ago, we had a funnel spider build a sheet that covered half of our front door! Let's just say it made for a very interesting conversation piece. :P
Wow...don't usually post stuff but these are beautiful!!! I'm inspired to find some webs and try this myself now...my house is also spider friendly...they are all called fred (for the boys) and of course Charlotte (for the girls)!!:)
an order of instinct prevails through all accidents of circumstance, though possibility is high along the peripheries of spider webs: you can go all around the fringing attachments
and find disorder ripe, entropy rich, high levels of random, numerous occasions of accident:
2) the possible settings of a web are infinite:
how does the spider keep identity while creating the web in a particular place?
how and to what extent and by what modes of chemistry and control?
it is wonderful how things work: I will tell you about it because
it is interesting and because whatever is moves in weeds and stars and spider webs and known is loved: in that love, each of us knowing it, I love you,
for it moves within and beyond us, sizzles in to winter grasses, darts and hangs with bumblebees by summer windowsills:
I will show you the underlying that takes no image to itself, cannot be shown or said, but weaves in and out of moons and bladderweeds, is all and beyond destruction because created fully in no particular form:
if the web were perfectly pre-set, the spider could never find a perfect place to set it in: and
if the web were perfectly adaptable, if freedom and possibility were without limit, the web would lose its special identity:
the row-strung garden web keeps order at the center where space is freest (intersecting that the freest "medium" should accept the firmest order)
and that order diminishes toward the periphery allowing at the points of contact entropy equal to entropy.
Not quite as beautiful as natural spider webs but look at this to see an amazing piece of art made from led lighting & thousands of crysals. http://www.flickr.com/photos/liverpoolbiennial/2892056332/in/set-72157607535470041/
I just wanted to say that I appreciate that none of these photos contained the actual spiders. While I find spiderwebs beautiful and fascinating, their creators scare the bejeezus out of me >.<.
No, GOD NO! Zip ties are the bane of the industry. Too many twits yank down on them and kink the cables! Then every one and their mother wants to cut off the end of them, which turns them into little plastic razors! I can't even tell you how many scars I have from those things. Good god man. NO, just NO!
The 2nd photo - Pho Ly Quoc Su is in Viet Nam. There are many examples of such wiring "arrangements" in Ha Noi and elsewhere. No idea in which city this particular street is since the same street names are used repeatedly in various cities.
ok, that credit card one was obviously done for effect. the card still has the "I am not yet activated" sticker on it. Someone just got a couple cards and some tweezers and took a photo.
Hey, good thing to note is those 'perfect' wiring jobs. there is such a thing as too perfect, and those are a good example. Proper structured cabling should not be perfectly parallel, combed, straight cables. Such an arrangement promotes crosstalk and impedes signals. cable bundles should be slightly lose, and allowed to weave a bit. They may look messy, but you'll have a significantly cleaner signal on your network.
Holy crap, did i actually LEARN something from my Data Communications course? oO
Ditto the earlier comment about the evils of zip ties. Use only on a permanent installation, and it's rare any wiring is going to be permanent.
For most applications I use velcro ties, they're a bit more expensive than zip ties, but you only have to buy them once. Write them off as a business expense. :)
@ james: Actually, Cat5/6 cables, as well as shielded coax/fibre/other waveguides are designed not to crosstalk with each other. Consider that a Cat5 has 4 pairs, each w/ different signals, and they don't have problems due to the architecture i.e., the twist in the pairs along with the opposing current creates a net 0 EM field, therefore no inducted voltage in another pair.
I also agree w/ Scott, I hate zip ties, although if I have to use them, I twist them off, which creates a smooth end. I hate them more due to the disposable nature of them...
one last link to the ultimalatte wild wiring http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Touched_by_His_Noodly_Appendage.jpg/250px-Touched_by_His_Noodly_Appendage.jpg
The painted cubes is a work of Agustín Ibarrola, a basque artist.It called "Los cubos de la memória" (The memory cubes)and is placed at the village of Llanes (Asturias)
If you're wondering, the Pininfarina concept pictured is a Ferrari 206 S Dino Berlinetta Competizione. It's based on a prototype racer chassis. More info here (as well as a comment from the current owner): http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/3713/Ferrari-206-S-Dino-Berlinetta-Competizione.html
Alvarhillo, are you 100% sure ? I would also say it's in the Basque Country but in the north, in France, in Socoa. http://maps.google.fr/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.396956,-1.677099&spn=0.006018,0.013947&t=h&z=17
Maybe it's two different works by the same people.
Yes, I confirm : it is the rompeolas from the small puerto de Llanes, a very very nice place to visit. http://www.ojodigital.com/foro/concursos-de-ojodigital/110700-ganadores-concurso-llanes-con-mucho-ojo-2006-a.html "Esto ye Asturies" !!!
Wow! That takes me back; my father bought us the blue and the brown robots, on the 2nd row, in London in 1970. You could pose the arms with satisfying clicks. With AA batteries in their legs they buzzed along on rubber caterpillar tracks, lights flashing!
For the record...yes they do make tin robots today. Although they're most likely made in China and considered "adult collectibles not suitable for young children".
In fact, in that first group of tin robot pictures in the bottom left corner is an gray R-1 robot produced about 10 years ago by Rocket USA. They still make versions of it today.
If you like robots AND DONUTS, check out the art work of Eric Joyner (http://www.ericjoyner.com/) - he paints excellent toy robots being perturbed by donuts, often of giant proportions. Two great tastes that taste great together.
in the picture "Goodwin Museum Toy Robot Collection:"
You can see the robot Gort ( http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/The-Day-the-Earth-Stood-Still-757302.jpg) from the movie "the day the earth stood still"
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Arcologies were one of my favorite parts about the SimCity series. Loved to plant about 4-5 of those in an area.
I can't imagine who would want to live in a place like that. You would never own your bit, only rent it, and you couldn't do anything serious to personalize it. Talk about the Neighborhood Association from Hell. Of course, I wouldn't mind if large numbers of other people went to live in one and left the real land open for people who appreciate it.
I highly recommend anyone interested in it to do check out arcosanti if they find themselves north of phoenix.
Sure, the project has mostly stalled in a larger sense, but is still self supporting. One thing the pics don't capture is the experience of being in those buildings, very unique, and very refreshing in a sense. It was early summer when I visited, very hot out, and yet quite cool and comfortable inside, without any AC on. The internal distribution of thermal energy and movement of air felt much more fresh and alive than the artificial cold tomb-like experience of most of Phoenix's large buildings that time of year.
Aesthetics aside, Soleri has a gift for creating true living spaces.
Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket... Having an entire city in one structure leaves the entire population very vulnerable to a variety of disasters: fire, epidemic, power failures, enemy or terrorist attack, etc., not to mention the attendant problems of utilities, waste disposal, emergency evacuation, and maintenance. Some ideas look a lot better on paper than in reality.
They aren't such a clever idea, 1 million people crammed in, what if a bomb goes off in a very important place, you could have up to 1 million casualties!
I've always thought that Solari's megacities were to some extant a reactin to Frank Loyd Wright's Broadacre City; a vison of continent ecompassing sprawl. PT: actually his vision was a bit more heterogenous. The exteriors aren't very uniform because building really only provides a concrete slab and basic infrastructure. Everything else would be built by the individual "condo-owner."
All are legitimate concerns, thanks for this neat discussion.
Good work and great images.
In my blog i put another arcologies like X-Seed 4000 and Shimizu TRY 2004 Mega-City Pyramid
These are all grand ideas that lead to something bigger. While the concerns raised by the commenters here are all valid, these represent the first step in being able to colonize other worlds once they are determined to be able to sustain life, or we have developed the capacity to make other worlds sustain life.
Arcologies like this provide us with an opportunity, built on Earth, to discover the flaws, problems, logistical hurdles and potentials for disaster that exist in the designs prior to building them in space and sending them, fully loaded, to another world, or building them on that world. If they can be made stable in an environment that is already relatively stable, they have passed the first step towards being able to support human life elsewhere in the universe. It is only a few more baby steps to design them in such a way as to be able to survive elsewhere and/or travel there under their own power and land safely.
Big plans require big ideas.
To those who dismissed the idea's based on fear filled sentiments, I am profoundly sorry. A bomb can cause 1 million casualties due to the close proximity of the living quarters? Damn, all it takes is a bigger bomb, which you know each country is always developing and the benefits of being spread out are lost, and the cons are all thats left. Destruction of natural ecosystems around the entire world have been destroyed based on people wanting to own "their" piece. At least with arcologys nature has a better chance of surviving. And humans still just have human problems, like thinking you need more than you have. Americans wake up to the world your part of please.
Another cult complete with a saintly founder who enjoys his own opulent private quarters (with desert swimming pool) while his acolytes do all the drudgery trying to get his unwieldy designs to work.
He nowadays passes his time making styrofoam models for the trademark wind chimes. Incidentally, his eco-friendly minions directly invest molten metal into the styrofoam sending gouts of poisonous black hydrocarbons into the otherwise pristine high-desert skies.
"Thinking globally but acting locally." What a crock!
Mainly someone said this seems like putting all your eggs in one basket - well think about it this way: Earth = One Basket. We need to spread out and this is a logical primer.
Next to the guy who said leave land to the people who appreciate it. The point of this is to give everyone the opportunity to appreciate land not divide it up and fence it off and 'customize' it.
There will never be enough land to go around and some of the best land is taken by people who assume they have a right to keep it from everyone else.
lets build one of these over the darian gap!?
glass bottom city-structure overlooking the last and wildest uncivilized part of the world.
it would be quite poetic! the most advanced in conservation and sustainability with a view of that which is untouched.
Bogie... Your comment made my day. Quite an idea!
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