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Paolo Soleri 1919–, Italian-American architect. He studied architecture in Turin (Ph.D., 1946). Soleri's works have been influenced by both Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom he worked, and Antonio GaudI. He developed an architecture that expresses a functional and organic way of life. Soleri has produced extraordinary designs for vast, high-density, self-sufficient, and multilevel communities built in the desert. These, which he terms arcologies, are proposed alternatives and responses to the increased problems of overpopulation and urban sprawl and decay. Soleri and his students and assistants have been building an arcology, Arcosanti, north of Phoenix, Ariz. since 1970. It was conceived as a prototype to show how cities might be updated, minimizing energy and transportation use while promoting human interaction. Soleri is the author of Arcology: The City in the Image of Man (1969).
See his Sketchbooks (1971); J. Strohmeier, ed., The Urban Ideal: Conversations with Paolo Soleri (2000); D. Wall, Visionary Cities: The Arcology of Paolo Soleri (1970); A. I. Lima, Paolo Soleri: Architecture, or Human Ecology (2000, tr. 2001).
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