Search for a Lean Alternative - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 522

Garment architecture
[winter - glazing
summer - shade]

Greenmantle
[garden terraces]
Solar collectors

1 Apse effect 3 Chimney effect

Winter induction chimney
summer cool tube

e arcology setting becomes
the stage for the urban effect...

4 Heat sink effect

2 Greenhouse/horticulture
effect

ermal mass

Water recycling

Genset
[solar electric
power generation]

FIGURE 30.1
Two Suns arcology: using solar orientation as a resource to benefit urban life.

An arcology's direct proximity to uninhabited land would provide the city dweller with
constant immediate and low-impact access to rural space, as well as allowing agriculture
to be situated near the city, maximizing the logistical efficiency of food distribution
systems. Arcology would use passive solar architectural techniques such as the apse effect,
greenhouse architecture, and garment architecture to reduce the energy usage of the city,
especially in terms of heating, lighting, and cooling (Figure 30.1). Overall, an arcology
seeks to embody a lean alternative to hyperconsumption and wastefulness through more
frugal, efficient, and intelligent city design.
Arcology theory holds that this leanness is obtainable only via the miniaturization
intrinsic to the “urban effect,” that is, the complex interaction between diverse entities and
organisms, which mark healthy systems both in the natural world and in every successful
and culturally significant city in history.

30.4 Arcosanti: A Lean Alternative Laboratory
In 1970, the Cosanti Foundation purchased land to begin the building of Arcosanti,
the first arcology and experiential city in the high desert of Arizona, 70 miles north of
metropolitan Phoenix.* When complete, Arcosanti will house 5000 people, demonstrating
ways to improve urban conditions and lessen our destructive impact on the earth. Its large,
compact structures and large-scale solar greenhouses will occupy only 25 ac of a 4060 ac
land preserve, keeping the natural countryside in close proximity to urban dwellers.
Arcosanti constitutes an instrument and process for applying the lean alternative. It is
a construction site, a process-architecture development in what I call the “lean-habitat
mode.” The structures and materials we use are the expression of a brain that developed,
not in a nondescript and depressing environ, but in the Italian-Mediterranean physical
and cultural landscape (Figure 30.2).

* http://www.arcosanti.org/ (accessed August 20, 2011).