Paolo Soleri (1919–2013)

Given the name of the series, Conversations, it's pretty clear that the architect in question should be conversing with somebody—an interviewer, students, a room full of people, what have you. But much of the content within the books are one-way. It is much more the case with the Paolo Soleri title than others I've read. There is a short interview with editor Lissa McCullough, but the bulk of the book is made up of writings from Soleri's notebooks, as well as an essay by McCullough and ones by collaborators Marco Felici and Youngsoo Kim. The book is a good introduction to Soleri's ideas on architecture and cities, focused on the arcology concept and its realization outside Phoenix.… (more)

This is an exceptional book in a lot of ways, the art work is really nice, the diagrams (suprisingly) engaging, I liked both parts of this book.

It starts with some dense discussion on what a city on earth will need to become, his titular arcologies, which are cities in the image of man. By this, Soleri goes into the need for compact self-contained cities. But, while I don't always agree with his conclusions (although see his point for why they are necessary), some of his thoughts in-passing were really amazing. As just one example, when he talks about how humanity/evolution is becoming ever more improbably and so cannot apply usual statistical methods (he says it much nicer than that), has still stuck with me.

Ironically, the actual images, while really nice, were not the best part. I had a hard time following his architectural cut-away style and, while I'm sure a lot of thought went into it, it was hard for me to see what he was intending.

Either way, a fun book to read (it's huge!) and an interesting thing to think about… (more)