Cosanti

Defining Desert Living, September 2020

The legacy of architect, ecological pioneer, urban philosopher, artist and craftsman, Paolo Soleri (1919– 2013) thrives at Cosanti in Paradise Valley and Arcosanti in Cordes Junction, 70 miles north of Phoenix. Also in Arizona, admirers remember him for the Soleri Bridge crossing the Arizona Canal at Camelback Road in downtown Scottsdale.

From the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, Soleri and a cadre of apprentices and volunteers students designed and built Cosanti. These structures include the Earth House (1956), Pumpkin Apse/Barrel Vaults (1967), Soleri Studio (1959), CatCast Home (1965), Gallery (1961) and canopied Pool (1966); they represent Soleri’s pioneering vision to create a habitat balancing human needs and the environment.

Designated a culturally significant site on the Arizona State Registry of Historic Places, Cosanti is also where Soleri perfected his “earth-casting” technique for building structures and procedures for casting the now-famous bells; where he designed his great unbuilt bridges; and where he wrote Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, which inspired him to build Arcosanti.

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Tulsa Race Massacre

ENR Texas/Louisiana, October 2020

On June 1, 1921, Oklahoma Gov. James Robertson declared martial law in Tulsa after a white girl claimed she had been raped by a black resident.
Ultimately,  300 people died and 800-plus were injured, $2.7 million in property damage resulted ($30–50 million in 2021 value) and thousands were interned and homeless. The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre had destroyed the 35 square blocks comprising “Black Wall Street,” one of the nation’s wealthiest black communities. On June 2, 2021, the 11,000-sq-ft Greenwood Rising history center was dedicated, a $7.5-million one-story building celebrating the great story of the Greenwood District.

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Douglas B Sydnor, Historic Buildings Define Our Spirit

ARA, March April 2021

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Our Future Homes & Offices

Green Living, September 2020

The way we work in the office, how we live at home, how we interact with family, friends and our neighbors: COVID-19 has changed our lives. The pandemic has forced us to socially distance from those we do not know and even distance ourselves from those we do. Many of us who are older began our careers in cubicled environments built by the individualist post-World War II ideal: a womblike space all ours to produce and achieve on our own spunk and merit. The technological culture of connectivity then forged a collegial environment of open spaces for collaboration and sharing. The pandemic has changed this, at least for a while, to larger cubicle spaces and smaller shared ones. We Zoom together; before we roomed together. Staying more at home, we have looked to home gyms and expanded offices and home-at-school spaces for the children. Not traveling, we are spending more money for upgrades or even buying new homes. We want, says one of the contributors, Zen.

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