I set out this morning to drive west from Page, to see Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, but somewhere between my parking space and the exit I changed my mind completely and headed south instead. I don’t know why. Maybe I’ve seen enough canyons. Maybe I felt I should start heading back towards reality. Maybe I needed some culture.
Anyway, I passed through Flagstaff for the third time and headed out towards Phoenix. On the way I saw a sign that said “Arcosanti”, which rang a bell in my mind, so I turned off the interstate and drove up a dirt track to see what I could see.
Arcosanti is an experimental vision for urban architecture, created by Paolo Soleri. They promised tours, so I stopped in. A nice guy called Jeff showed me round (just me) for an hour or so. I felt I had to double the normal donation of ten bucks to justify being the only one on the tour. Judging by what I saw, this probably made a significant contribution to the project’s income.
Arcosanti
Soleri’s vision is for high-density urban development, as an antidote to the awful sprawl of most American cities, where you need a car just to get from one store to the next and you rarely see another actual human being. His big thing is “arcology” – a mix of architecture and ecology – and since I’m a biologist and a complex systems theorist, and I supervise a PhD student who is specifically interested in adapting biological principles to architecture, it sounded right up my street.
From the little I’ve read so far, Soleri’s ideas sound solid enough, but the practice leaves something to be desired. The grand vision is for a city with 5,000 inhabitants on the site. He started the project in 1956, the building process got underway in 1970 and now, almost forty years after that, there are a scattering of half-finished buildings and a transient population of roughly 80 people, mostly students.
Part of the problem is funding. Soleri funded his own career making bronze and ceramic bells, so the first building on the site was a foundry, and now people make bells to provide income for the project. Unfortunately, making bells seems to occupy the time they ought to be spending building structures. Amazingly, there are no significant research grants going into the project. The US government can stump up a few billion dollars for a particle accelerator but nothing whatsoever for figuring out how to rebuild their cities when urban decay meets up with an energy crisis, leading to ecological disaster. So the project continues in fits and starts, funded by profits from bell-making and a little income from workshop participants and the odd musical production.
An awful lot has happened in architecture, energy technology, town planning and even ecology since 1970, but the Arcosanti project seems stuck in the hippie past. It saddened me. In principle I’m in a position to just drop out, put my sleeping bag in one of their concrete cubicles and devote my life to helping them out. From what Jeff said it certainly sounds like they’d welcome me with open arms. They desperately need engineers – people who can actually make things – and they need people who know about modern ideas in ecology and self-organising systems. Plus people who can translate between the mutually incomprehensible languages of architecture, science and hippie. But I think I’d be hugely frustrated by the inertia of the place. Not much seems to happen per decade. And it reminded me of my own “career” – a big vision, creeping painfully slowly forward for lack of resources. It gave me an awful feeling of deja-vu. I’m glad I saw it though.
A social space in Arcosanti
After that I descended 5,000 feet from the High Desert to the low Sonoran Desert, land of the seguaro cactus, and I’m now in Phoenix, Arizona. The temperature has risen as I descended, from the mid 70’s to 93F (34C), even though it is the evening. Phoenix has the distinction of being the hottest major American city, with temperatures well above 100F throughout the summer, sometimes reaching over 120F (49C). But unlike Louisiana it’s bone dry, so the heat is relatively bearable.
So, a couple of days ago I had half a mile of beach all to myself, and now I’m in the fifth largest city in the United States. Bit of a contrast! So far I’ve only seen one person whose waist measurement is smaller than their height, and he had needle holes all down his arm, so my first impressions aren’t great. And the city planners clearly didn’t listen to a single word Paolo Soleri said. But we’ll see what tomorrow brings. For all I know I’ll get in the car and suddenly decide to drive to New York…
33°36’11.07″N, 112° 7’6.31″W
Today’s sensations: Unusual impulsiveness, but I think that’s probably a good thing.
Well, you still have a standing invitation to stop by and see us, Steve. You’re welcome to stay over for a few days, or even pitch your tent in our back yard lawn if you feel like it!
Your observations about Arcosanti are some of your most poignant. It will make a great chapter in your upcoming book. 😉
Thanks Norm. I’d love to, but Sara needs her car back and I have to travel a long way to get to Louisiana yet, plus I’m spending money I need to live on, so I think I need to trend east now. But I’ll definitely come and see you both again at the first opportunity.
Yes, I’m thinking about possibly writing a book called “Spirit: science for the courageous artist”. I think there are ways to describe nature that differ from the traditional scientific explanations but which are potentially more acceptable and exciting to those with an artistic/humanities bent (if they have the courage). The “spirit” part is because the physical sciences seem to many people to glorify matter and deny spirit, apparently demoting many of the things they care about to mere clockwork. But I think there is only spirit, and matter is just one of its guises. I’d like to write a “cybernetic” book, looking at the organizing and creative forces of nature in an aesthetic way. My hope is that shifting people’s viewpoints in this way might show them a beauty underlying nature that’s much more profound and interesting than, say, New Age mysticism, alternative medicine or human-centered reasoning. And yet it resonates with the very good reasons why people are interested in such things. But it’s a hard thing to carry off, or even to describe, so I’m still thinking about it.
I wonder what title would accompany the subtitle “art for the courageous scientist”? Perhaps it would actually be the same book…
That sounds like a wonderful book, and you’re the perfect guy to write it because you move effortlessly between the technical and the artistic. It certainly sounds like a book I would like to read.
I had the good fortune to be trained by Fred Fixler, an exceptional artist who was truly a master. Take a look at what he said about drawing in the piece below; it’s amazing how it applies not only to drawing, but all of art—and even life itself.
His teaching can basically be summarized by this:
“You must learn to see, not so much learn to draw.”
http://nasonart.com/writing/fixlerlessons.html
Wow! Those look like good rules. I don’t understand them all but that’s because I can’t draw. Or I can’t draw because I don’t understand them all. Anyway, I very much agree with the basic sentiment. And it applies perfectly to science and invention too – all invention comes from finding the right way to look at the problem.
That, in a way, is what joins art and science, I think. It would help if this were more widely appreciated. We all use metaphor to help us to see things. Artists mostly use metaphors and similes, scientists mostly use analogies and models. Each is just a different shade on a continuum. Each is a way of using something known to shine a revealing light on something unknown.
Dear Steve,
If you think that your big vision is creeping painfully and slowly forward for lack of resources, then don’t go it alone so much! Learn to delegate; the big AI problem is too big for any one person to do in their lifetime.
Remember you are famous now, so leverage that resource. You have plenty of fans who would help you machine mechanical parts, make PCBs or write software modules for you. If you can dream it, we can build it.
I for one would be happy to collaborate on the big AI problem as it is my life’s ambition to solve it, and even at my age I recognise that I’m not going to make it in time working alone.
Kind Regards,
Nicholas Lee
Hi Nicholas,
Yes, for many people that would make sense, I agree. But although it’s probably arrogant of me, I’m just not a collaborator. Every collaboration I’ve been involved in has been a disaster. I was once technical director of a company with 80 well-paid people, ready to do my bidding, but that didn’t work either. I just don’t think in the same way as most people, nor do I design things the same way as most people, so it’s very hard for me to delegate and still get back what I expected or actually needed. And it is through doing these things for myself that I get all my ideas – if someone else does them then I miss out on a lot of inspiration. The problem isn’t really that modular anyway – after all, there are dozens of AI labs in the world where large teams are working together on the problem and they don’t make much progress. Plus I can’t afford it – who would pay to keep me alive while I delegated? The slowness isn’t because of the workload, it’s because of the money. I’ve just learned over the years that I’m at my best and most creative working alone. Sometimes it’s vital that the whole problem exists inside one person’s head. But I do appreciate the sentiment.
Dear Steve,
Yes, I had a feeling that you were going to say that but I had to ask.
With regard to the money issue, do you feel you would be able to cope with working for someone else in a regular job, or would you always have to be your own boss? (I am betting the latter, but sometimes needs must)
If you are interested in earning some money in a conventional way then if I ‘might’ be able to get you a job at my work. This would supply you with both the funds and the engineering resources to carry on.
See http://www.roke.co.uk/about/
We are the R&D brains of SIEMENS in the UK.
We are a friendly community of about 450 design engineers. I nominally work in the machine vision group, but I get asked to solve an eclectic range of problems, so I am never bored. At our beautiful site we have 22 acres of landscaped grounds, tennis courts, and a sports club with a bar, a putting green, a gym and even trout fishing.
We also have comprehensive SMD PCB manufacturing facilities, test-gear dept., metal machining facilities including a 5-axis CNC machine and a 3D printer. They even pay us quite well too!
Kind Regards,
Nicholas Lee
PS: Blighty misses you, come home!
Ideally I’ll stay self-employed (self-unemployed?), but needs must, as you say! Thanks very much for the thought – I’ll seriously consider it. I’ll have to put it in the mix with all the other variables, though. Life’s a bit complex at the moment! Sounds like a nice environment. Thanks again.
– Steve
Hi! I’m the Community Manager of Ruba.com. We’re building a website to highlight some of the most interesting places travelers around the world have discovered. We’ve read hundreds of blogs about Phoenix and we think that this post is awesome! We’d love to highlight excerpts from your blog (assuming it’s OK with you of course) and to discuss other ways of tapping into your expertise if you are interested. I’m at erin[at]ruba.com.
Thanks! 🙂