Environmental Engineering Reference
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playful arrangements of form—the architect's traditional role must be
diminished. (Zoning has begun to limit this effect, except for the prima
donnas, builders who are excused due to some perceived overriding good.)
Inventing for the urban environment, Soleri would argue, must be taken as
seriously as technology employed elsewhere.The history that informs urban
development, ancient and modern, can be absorbed, and, perhaps, much of
it discounted as new building materials and societal issues render old
assumptions a field of obsolete thinking. Wherever real issues of mortality
and efficiency are already perceived to be at stake personality and self-
expression take a distant second.We see no follies or idiosyncrasies in good
engineering; public discontent would not allow senseless and dangerous
construction generally, and we have laws and oversight to enforce those
laws regulating civil engineering. Naval architecture tolerates no frivolity;
lives, weight, speed, and freight are at stake, none are risked lightly for the
cause of the designer's self-aggrandizement.The space vehicles of whatever
nation, and space stations planned, are not symbols—they must work.These
fields offer a standard of performance that is translatable. If we wish to pre-
serve the ancient benefits of urbanism to humankind, city design will have
to be taken equally as seriously as naval architecture or aerospace environ-
ments. The stakes are even higher, but the inertial greed more widely dis-
persed.To overcome perceived, but incorrect, notions of self-interest, and to
oust the ancient and deeply rooted pride of the city, something new will
have to be tried.As was the case whenever necessity over-ruled fashion, the
architect may have to give way to the artist like Hundertwasser or to a
newer profession, such as Soleri represents.
STATEMENT BY PAOLO SOLERI
I
While positioning myself in various domains like society, politics, technol-
ogy, sex, environ, and so on, I have adopted a device I find useful. I call it the
Bubble Diagram. As is true of all expedient devices, its existence is justified
by its usefulness, not by its intrinsic meaning. In fact, it does not per se have
a meaning; it is a virtual landscape subdivided into four domains. The bor-
der line of each domain is porous to let a trespassing from one to another.
In what follows, I will try the Bubble Diagram through the four
perspectives suggested by it—Political Correctness, Historical Fitness,
