FRAGMENTS: A SELECTION FROM THE SKETCHBOOKS OF PAOLO SOLERI
Paolo Soleri
Paolo Soleri: FRAGMENTS: A SELECTION FROM THE SKETCHBOOKS OF PAOLO SOLERI [The Tiger Paradigm-Paradox]. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981. First edition. Quarto. Gray paper covered boards bound in black quarter cloth titled in silver. Printed dust jacket. Salmon endpapers. 211 pp. 30 black and white illustrations. SIGNED and dated by Soleri on half title page. Jacket spine orange ink faded, wrapping around to front panel. Trivial wear overall, thus a nearly fine copy in a very good or better dust jacket.
6.5 x 9.5 hardcover book signed and dated by Soleri on half title page. 211 pages designed to persuade the reader that Soleri alone can save earth from man and man from himself.
Includes Fundamental Hypothesis -- Time -- Past, Present, Future -- The Alpha God -- The Infant God -- The Omega Seed -- An Eschatological Model -- The Urban Effect -- Wo-Man and Society -- Technology, Biotechnology, Technocracy -- Freedom, Mediocrity, Democracy -- Feasibility, Desirability, Transcendence -- Complexity, Miniaturization, Duration -- Crowding, Urban Effect -- Frugality, Fitness, justness -- Form-Function, Means-Ends -- Revelation, Creation, Evolution -- Fate, Natural Order, Destiny -- Being, Becoming, Duration -- Alpha God, Idolatry, Theocracy -- Conservation, Consummation, Resurrection -- Anticipation, Technology-Science, Theology -- Mass-Energy, Space-Time -- Esthetogenesis -- Truth, Justice, Beauty, Grace.
Through his work as an architect, urban designer, artist, craftsman, and philosopher, Paolo Soleri (1919-2013) has been exploring the countless possibilities of human aspiration. One outstanding endeavor is Arcosanti, an urban laboratory, constructed in the Arizona high desert. It attempts to test and demonstrate an alternative human habitat which is greatly needed in this increasingly perplexing world. This project also exemplifies his steadfast devotion to creating an experiential space to "prototype" an environment in harmony with man.
In his philosophy "arcology" (architecture + ecology), Soleri formulated a path that may aid us on our evolutionary journey toward a state of aesthetic, equity, and compassion. For more than a half century, his work, marked by a broad-ranging and coherent intellect (so scarce in the age of specialization), has influenced many in search of a new paradigm for our built environment.
If the act of living includes the pioneering of reality through imagination and sweat, Soleri has given us more than enough food for thought in the examples he has left on paper and in the desert wind.
"Soleri bases his entire arcology neither on economic, social, or industrial considerations but on a philosophical system. It is so all-embracing in its scope that it relates the arcological city unity to the entire evolution of organic life, from the proto-biological primordial ooze to an as yet unevolved Neo-Matter . . . . Insisting that nature and human evolution work as vectors or parallel progressions, he ties the future fate of mankind to the same increasing complexification that has marked the rise of our organism from the amoeba." -- Sibyl Moholy-Nagy The Architectural Forum, 1970